Day Two of Thirty
What I’m thinking about with street portraits: Why black and white?
Honestly, I suck at color photos. Seriously, I see street portraits in color and my jaw drops. How do they do that? There’s so much going on to get the color to fit the mood. Especially the reds and blues? Like, Davidrandom photos pictures.. look at his May 13th shot of the trolley (it’s in a series, dig for it). The intensely bright red of the trolley, but the city is a soft aquamarine, and then warm light from the building? GTFO. No chance that my eyes would pull that all together.
A little also that black and white doesn’t put a burden on the subject or people looking at it. It’s enough to be honest, enough to provide an image to think about, but not enough to be enveloping or heavy. Also, early on, a few photos in black and white came out ok, and the thought was “those don’t suck, let’s stick with that”.