Life in Monochrome

Something I've always found interesting in photography is the idea of using a limited color palette.  Painters do it all the time, and since digital has taken over, I think photographers have even more options than ever before.


With digital, we have unlimited control over basically every aspect of our images, so more often than not we go for the maximums.
Maximum blacks.
Maximum saturation.
Maximum sharpening.
The list goes on.

In my opinion, this is why we see more color images floating around than black and whites.

I'm not saying this is bad, just that a full range of colors, or even color itself, isn't always important.

This is a shot of fire, but did I really need to include the colors for you to know that? In fact, wouldn't color take away from the mystery of the image?

The use of color, now more than ever seems to be tool rather than a limitation.


Use it how you will.
My only advice is to pay close attention to the content of your images and whether or not color helps or hurst it.

Some of the best photos every taken would look like crap if they were made any other way, Then again, maybe doing something different would have made them even better.