Though I’m not a black and white photographer, sometimes I choose to pull the color out of my shots after I walk through the streets of New York. Here’s why.
I grew up in New York City. It’s my forever hometown. Though I haven’t lived there in decades, my life forever orbits around it.
I’m as close as the 7:55am Metro North train into Grand Central Terminal.
Discovering What’s Around the Corner
Many of the photos I’ve taken of the Big Apple over the years are simply the result of my commutes and what I’ve run into on the streets of Manhattan.
And I’ve found that more than a few of my resulting shots look better as black and white versions.
Prometheus Watches Over the Ice (2021)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Why am I drawn to the black and white look? When you think about New York City, what are a few descriptors that come to mind? For me, I would say:
Classic
Dramatic
Timeless
Gritty
And these are also some of the ways that black and white images present themselves. So, the visual and energy alignment is clear.
Better in Black and White
That’s why I occasionally feel compelled to click on the tiny black and white button when editing my New York City photos on my Mac Studio. (My tool of choice is Adobe Lightroom. It offers a variety of B&W ‘looks.’)
As a result, my selected shots often benefit from their visual conversion into the black and white universe.
Sure, they still look nice in color. I just like them better in black and white. It generates a classic timelessness about them.
Here are more examples.
Atlas Lifts World Cup Awareness (2026)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Scabby the Rat Protests (2026)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Morning Commute at Grand Central Terminal (2025)
Photo by Barrett Lester
East 63rd Street (2022)
Photo by Barrett Lester
48th and 5th Avenue (2021)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Smith & Wollensky (2021)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Bliss (2021)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Outdoor Dining (2016)
Photo by Barrett Lester
Follow Your Flow
I usually don’t go looking for photos to snap on the streets of New York. Certainly not black and white ones. They find me. And I often don’t recognize the opportunity to convert them to black and white till much later… sometimes years later when I review them again.
I’m not sure what that says about me as a photographer, but it does reveal something about my creative process.
We all travel our own road that leads us into inspiration and towards creative execution.You just have to go with the flow and see where it takes you.
The past has its ways of talking to you, even if you can’t directly hear it. Here’s what I learned after digitizing my fathers’ old 8mm film reels.
There’s that movie scene from “Iron Man 2,” where Tony Stark reviews old film outtakes of his deceased father Howard Stark. The raw film clips show Howard making a promotional film decades earlier. First, Howard is annoyed by child Tony, who plays in the background and ruins the scene. There’s no fatherly love expressed here.
But at the back end of the reel, Howard unexpectedly turns to the camera and seemingly breaks through time, talking directly to future Tony. Howard shares his love for his son, knowing at some point, Tony would receive his heartfelt message at the moment Tony needed it most.
On the one hand, this all seems a bit contrived, though not entirely implausible. But the scene really spoke to me. I’ve watched it many times. I’m drawn to it. And now, I finally understand why.
My Father was a Filmmaker I’ve just finished converting my father’s old 8mm family movies to digital files. He began shooting them before I was born and then continued throughout my early years.
But he gradually stopped his hobby, focusing more on his photography. My dad’s old film reels simply sat in a white box forgotten in the back of my family’s hallway closet.
My mother and grandfather with me on my first birthday
These films reappeared many years later when I was an adult visiting my parents for the holidays. My father felt inspired to set up his aging movie projector for me and my mom, and he ran some of these old 8mm films for us. It was remarkable to watch them for the first time.
I brought along my camcorder, and I recorded his presentation displayed on a pull-up screen that he had also lugged along with his projector out of the closet. But we didn’t get through all the films. More than half remained unwatched.
Fast forward a few more decades, and that white box of family memories eventually found its way to my house. (My father passed away in 2022.)
Rescuing Our Family Films A few months back, I decided it was finally time to try to properly convert all these time capsules, which had deteriorated somewhat, but were still viewable.
But the film-to-digital converter worked well enough to bring these silent moments back to life. And the quality was fine for my needs.
The conversion process was wicked slow, and I also found much of the content not worth saving. On the other hand, certain reels contained priceless moments of my parents and my paternal grandfather. And of course, I had to go through what seemed like miles of film to find them.
And then I stumbled upon one huge surprise buried in a strangely unlabeled reel. It was the day my parents’ families first met at my maternal grandparents’ house. It was shot like an old news reel covering some massive public event. (Of course, this was a big event for the two families.)
After I first watched it, it felt like I had jumped through a time portal to witness history. It’s a true gem. And now I’ve got it properly archived.
A Baby Surrounded by History I also converted numerous clips of young Barrett, from baby and toddler to little kid. Sure, I was cute, but I think the greater value in these scenes comes from looking at everything around me- the people, the styles and the environment. Here’s my grandfather with me and my mother on a sunny 20th century afternoon in New York City’s Central Park.
Was the Payoff Worth the Grind? I mentioned the digital conversion process takes time. Yes, lots of time!
Each 3-minute reel took me 33 minutes or so to convert, as the digitizer snaps a photo of each frame and then stitches it all together into an MP4 file on an SD card (slick but slow). And I also had some larger reels to deal with… those took hours!
And it’s also not a ‘set it and forget it’ process. You can’t totally walk away. That’s because the film can easily jam in the converter. It’s not so much the unit’s fault. It has more to do with the condition of your film and quality of the splices. Any aberration, and the converter will jam. So, I needed to stay in the room to be able to see what was going on.
Plus, I found on several occasions that the film had broken mid-reel. This happened at some point decades back, and my father had never rejoined the pieces. Rather, he simply wrapped the rest of the film on top of the reel, leaving this booby trap for the future to figure out.
Give the Job to the Pros? You might say that my experience clearly points to the value of simply shipping your box of misbehaving film reels to a company to do the work for you. They’ll deal with the mess and create better-quality conversions. And think about all the time you’ll save.
The only big downside is accepting that you’ll also be paying to convert footage that you otherwise wouldn’t want to save. Plus, depending on the number of reels you’re converting, it eventually becomes more cost effective to do it yourself.
There’s no right answer here. It’s whatever makes more sense for you.
Silent Truths and Manufactured Moments I don’t think my father ever considered that I would attempt this project. Our family history is sufficiently documented in photos. I imagine as far as he was concerned, these films were simply his own hobby for him to enjoy during those years. Nothing more.
But of course, I was searching for something more. I wanted to understand more about my past.
As I reviewed the converted films, I looked for glimpses of certain ‘truths.’ I thought people in motion would reveal more than a posed photo. But I quickly realized there was plenty of posing going on here as well.In many of the scenes, my family acted like movie stars in front of the camera, exaggerating their movements and constantly smiling.
Those mannerisms may also have to do with the silent movie nature of 8mm film. Without audio on these 8mm film reels, of course my father couldn’t talk to me. So, I never got my Tony Stark moment.
First Steps But watching my parents interact during their early years together helped me fill out this optimistic first chapter in my own mind. Every story has a beginning, and I was watching theirs, however manufactured.
I got to see a bit more of my paternal grandfather. I have fond memories of him, and it was nice to see Grandpa in action again.
There was also a lot of footage of my mother, who loved the camera in those early days. She was my foundation as I grew up, and the film clips of us together warmly displayed those beginnings.
My mom and me dancing by the pool during a vacation
I can’t believe she’s been gone for twenty years. I’m so happy I now have these additional recorded moments of her.
But this project eventually leads me back to my father.
Look, we had a complicated relationship. Suffice to say, my father was a master storyteller, and I spent a lot of my adult life with him trying to figure out any number of little truths… and some bigger ones.
No, these old films didn’t answer any of them. But they did provide a bright view of my family’s life at the beginning. And I’d say that’s a real gift.
So, thank you, Dad. You were a pretty good filmmaker.
“I Built This for You” My 8mm family film conversion project is complete. No, my father never sent me a secret message like Howard Stark to fundamentally change my understanding of my past. But he did show me some things, and he captured a few priceless family moments along the way. There are even a few scenes of my father with boy Barrett having fun.
If you want to preserve home movies from past generations, you can convert them yourself using a film digitizer. Here’s what else to consider before you get started.
It’s been three years since my father passed away, and I’m still working on digitizing many of his old photos. I also have his negatives and ancient slides. It’s been a slow and painful process, both physically and emotionally.
I can’t possibly digitize every photo. So, I need to decide which ones are important in telling the official family history.
Are You Peering into an Alternate Universe? Curating a family’s story across generations can be a draining process. Some photos fit in nicely to support your own memories. Others seem like splinters to slightly alternate dimensions.
There can be a variety of little surprises that force you to realign your understanding of your own past. The good news is that can also contain priceless gems. These gifts can make what is an otherwise time-consuming process worth it.
So, I’ve started. Stopped. And started again, sometimes months later.
I’ve been using an Epson scanner/printer for my parents’ old prints and a Wolverine slide/negative converter to drive my digitizing/archiving project.
I’ve made progress, and I know there’s a finish line out there, which I’ll eventually reach.
What are You Supposed to Do with 8mm Film? But I’ve also inherited dozens of my father’s 8mm film reels. They’re tiny time capsules from decades ago that reveal the past in action… three minutes at a time.
But how am I supposed to convert this ancient media without a working film projector?
I had three choices:
Package up my 8mm movies and mail them to a company to do the work.
Find a store in town where I can physically hand over my dad’s motion pictures.
Buy a conversion device to do it myself.
Do You Actually Know What’s On Those Film Reels? Mailing out your film reels to digitize is usually less expensive than using a local brick and mortar operation. (That said, working with a local establishment may feel more secure, because there’s no risk of losing your film in the mail.)
But mailing it in can still be relatively expensive. And that price point can sting even more if you don’t really know what’s on all those film reels. (My father didn’t label his reels well.) So, you may be spending hundreds of dollars for old footage that you wouldn’t otherwise want to keep.
Yes, it’s a different story if you do know what’s on your film. With that level of knowledge, paying someone else do the conversion is an incredible time saver and can be worth it.
But for me, the only way to know for sure is to first engage a do-it-yourself strategy. And then if you uncover a few reels that contain priceless memories, then you can send just those few out for professional conversion.
So that’s what I set out to do…
Film Digitizers to Consider There are two conversion devices on the market that I researched:
Wolverine Data Film2Digital Moviemaker-Pro
Kodak REELS Film Digitizer
These movie film scanners literally photograph each frame of your film (8mm or Super 8) one at a time and then stitch them all together into a movie file on an SD card.
This takes a while.
Each 3-minute reel takes about 30 minutes to scan. So, you should plan your workflow accordingly.
There’s no sound conversion (8mm film didn’t contain sound anyway).
Ultimately, I ended up purchasing the Kodak REELS Film Digitizer because it creates a slightly higher resolution file (1728×1296).
Who Are Those People? As I write this, I’ve converted my 10th film reel. So, I’m about five hours in, and I’ve got a long way to go…
The process has so far felt like sifting for gold. I’ve found plenty of family vacation footage from tropical locations with me running around as a young child. Yes, I know I was cute, but a few of those shots is all anyone could possibly want to watch now.
Then, there are clips of what looks like friends of my parents, but they are total strangers to me. They may have a place in another family’s family archive, though not mine.
Remember you really can’t tell what you’re going to get from the first few frames on a reel. You need to go through all of it.
Separating the Digital Wheat from the Chaff In hindsight, I’m not surprised I’ve had to sift through a lot of cutting-room floor clips to find the money shots. This is all unedited footage. (If someone should somehow find my iPhone in 100 years and extract my own family video clips from it, I’m sure many of them will seem superfluous as well.)
That said, I am finding some cool clips of my family in action that are worth saving. So, I’m glad I’ve embarked on this project.
I also came upon some interesting environmental shots from the 1960s.
My father was clearly flying somewhere and shot this clip over Manhattan. Nice!
Doing It Yourself is a Reasonable Choice As for thequality of my father’s converted films using my Kodak REELS Film Digitizer, it’s what you’d expect. It’s good… good enough. (I know a professional shop would do a better job using equipment worth many thousands of dollars.)
And so far, my Kodak consumer unit has been operating well, though the image framing sometimes slips out of its center a bit after you start a conversion. (So, you need to start it again.)
Don’t Wait Any Longer Yes, I’m pleased with the way my film conversion project has been going. It’s a very hands-on process working with film, and I have to admit the tactile experience is strangely satisfying.
And yes, I’m glad I didn’t pay a company to globally convert all my father’s 8mm movies.
No matter how you approach this, it’s a lot of work (and some money). But if you’re the family’s archivist and you uncover old family film footage, there’s really no choice on what to do next.
