Color

As a black and white, rocks, trees, and figure photographer most of my life I have always been very skeptical of color. Did a lot, never liked what I'd done, so stopped doing it.

Even when I was shooting a lot of color I firmly believed that if the image was in color then color should be integral to it's success. Otherwise shoot in B&W. Maybe that's why there are so many boring color images but that's a topic for another time.

Along comes digital. Most who do serious black and white digital work shoot in raw and convert to black and white in post processing. When shooting in raw the images is always captured with all the color information.

At first I immediately converted everything to black and white to evaluate the images. However, over time I found that occasionally images that I had taken with my "black and white" photographic vision looked better in color. What I'm finding is that as I shoot more digital my color vision is developing. I can't say it's returning because I'm not sure it was ever there to begin with.

While I am starting to explore color, very little of my color work today would I call "conventional." I am much more intrigued by color that really makes a statement whether it is extremely subtle or over-the-edge, off-the-reservation color.

If you want to see a small example of my color work go to Gallery X on my website at http://www.photographybysteele.com/gallery10.htm.