Choices in Editing a Photo—Color or Black & White
Last week, Janeice and Chris at Queer Keys asked me to do a photo shoot of the contestants at their Aqua Idol fundraiser. I had a blast during the shoot and I got some great photos. When I started to develop the photos there were some big choices to make. One of the biggest choices was color or black & white?
Color or black & white?
There are lots of choices to make when you develop a photo—light levels, contrasts, texture, tone curves, sharpness, noise levels, color mixing, cropping, etc. For each of those choices there are specific questions that can help guide the adjustments. For me, the overriding question is what am I trying to convey with this photo and how best can I achieve that?
In this photo I wanted to convey the singer’s unbridled joy and character. I wanted to focus on her eyes and body language to do this, but the purple color from the stage lights overwhelmed everything else in the photo. When I switched to black & white the eyes and everything else came into focus. It reminded me of a classic rock photo from the 60’s. This one came out so good, that I switched all the other photos in the series to black & white as well.
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