Posts Tagged Color
Should a 'serious' photographer choose to shoot B&W or Colour?
To be honest, I find such questions difficult. Almost absurd. Yet I have asked them of myself, many times.
What has prompted me to ponder these questions, is the way in which a passion for black & white is often expressed with some degree of anti-colour sentiment; that somehow colour is dismissed as either being, not as arterly, or that it is common, cheap or beneath those who seek the 'purer essence' of a photograph, without the complication or contamination of colour. Here are some thoughts and a few colour photographers worth investigating...
I was asked how much I “tweaked” my images to get the intense colours which appear in some of my photographs. Here is a ‘before’ and ‘after’, so you can see for yourself. The answer is I don’t tweak much at all. Here's how I do it...
When I shoot film, I need to be able to see what my photograph will look like in my mind, because I can not see it on the back of a camera. And if I don't like what I see in my mind I need to know how to change it. The only way to do this well, is for camera and mind to become one. I need to be so familiar with my camera's settings and so experienced in making it capture an image, that working the camera becomes completely instinctive and transparent...
When I am making a photograph, light is what I look for most of all.
Composition is important, but light is what breathes life into an image.
Light adds drama, emotion and impact to a composition. Light is captivating; it can grab the viewer's eye and pull them through and around a composition in a way that a photograph, without good light, can not. Light passionately engages the viewer. Light is the heart that can make your picture beat.
