Technicolor

Okay, so not the most exciting picture ever, but I thought it would be nice to put something up from working at the university last week, and also for the novelty value of a colour shot on this blog!

This is somewhat relevant at the moment - at a portfolio critique yesterday the person looking over my work at one point said I should shoot colour rather than b&w, which wasn't something I was really expecting to hear. I told Kat from my band that it was a bit like being told your songs are great, but would sound better if played with banjos rather than guitars...

So, I didn't really know how to respond to that (or some of the other suggestions, which came down to matters of personal taste really), but I might as well set out the reasons why I do shoot in mono for my personal work. Firstly I should say that I've nothing against colour photography - in fact some of my favourite photographers shoot exclusively in colour (to name a few, Alex Webb, Miguel Rio Branco, Carl de Keyzer...), in fact part of the problem when I started taking pictures was that I was trying to use colour and b&w at the same time - meaning that I was carrying (at least) two cameras with me at all times, plus all the extra paraphenalia. What I noticed as this continued was that there was an inverse relationship between the amount of equipment carried and the number of (good) photographs made - you miss things if you're changing cameras, or trying to decide which to use in a given situation - and you do more if you have less.

I suppose I'm both a bit of a minimalist, and also someone who believes you work best when you understand the limits of the options open to you. So anyway, I made a conscious decision to focus exclusively on b&w, and although I do have "grass is greener" moments when I see great colour work, I haven't really regretted that decision...