“Rather than shooting in colour because a subject calls for it, people tend to do so because that’s how their camera is set up. And all too often people compose their shot using the language of colour and then hope that it will translate into black and white later. Neither of these approaches work.”

— Henry Carroll, Read this if you want to take great photographs of people

Black and White first

August 26, 2018 in journal

Many people use monochrome to "fix" a bad photo. Others seem to have doubts about which version they prefer, so they post both: color and black and white.

While you can get good results every once in a while, this approach is wrong.

The tools you have available in black and white photography are very different from the ones you can use when shooting in color. The image should be in your mind first, then -and only then- we can choose whatever tools we need to create it.