This isn’t going to be a super long post, but I wanted to write it to cover a question that I sometimes encounter when looking at my work.
What’s with all the Black & White (B&W) photos, don’t you do colour?
Short answer, yes I shoot colour, and my clients get colour edits of their photos. Black and white are for my own pleasure.
I know, we live in a colour world, we see in colour, so why do I love B&W Photography so much and why are most of the images on my website/social media in B&W? well, its purely my personal taste, and I chose to share mainly B&W images because I want to connect with clients who also love B&W images.
For me B&W photography is timeless. It’s not outdated, it will endure forever. Colour trends come and go, and often, when they are gone, we look back on them and shudder… and I am talking in general. Think powder blue tuxedos, fluorescent happy pants, burnt orange suits, bright pink puffy sleeve dresses. We can see a colour palette and immediately connect it with a period of time. The ’60s ’70s and 80’s all had unique colour palettes, and while retro might have a degree of “cool” factor, we know that the whole widespread trends of the time probably went over the top. The world of colour trends also exists in photo editing (in modern digital times more so than in the film days when the look of images was often determined by the film type used). We see trends of Orange and Teal editing, of desaturation, of completely changing the colours of a scene to fit an Instagram feed coherently. B&W is simple. it can vary in how contrasty the image is, it might have slight tints (stay away from sepia…please) but on the whole, when an image is done as a simple B&W image, it separates itself from the trends of the day, the passing fad for a certain colour suit, or the social media-driven colour grading to fit with what is currently trending on Instagram.
When we got married, we asked our photographer to shoot it on B&W film. Theres no going back from there, once the film is in the camera, that’s what you are getting. We wanted classic images that would not date because of the current on-trend colours. My parents’ wedding photos are B&W as well, and when you look at certain shots from either, it becomes hard to tell if it’s 1969 or 2005.
When it comes to my own personal photography, it is once again, 90% B&W. I love the simplicity of it. Remove the distraction of colour and the image becomes about the subject. That is unless the subject IS the colour, that the image requires colour to tell the story, but for me, that is the 10%.
Also, I love the challenge of making a strong image in B&W. As a photographer, it means that I have to rely on composition, on contrast, on how the light is playing on the subject to create a memorable image. I’m not going to the fallback crutch of shock and awe with bright attention-grabbing colours. In fact, with my cameras, I have them set up so that the preview I see is in B&W, even when the camera is saving a colour file.
Anyway, I’m going to leave you with a few of my favourite recent B&W images… ones I feel need no colour to work.
