Colour Can Be Too Demanding

I photograph almost exclusively in black and white. The caption on my profile says it plainly: colour can be too demanding. Not too difficult — too demanding. It asks for attention before the image has earned it.

Remove the colour and a photograph has to stand on structure: light, geometry, the weight of a shadow against a wall. There is nowhere to hide, which is precisely the point. What survives in monochrome was worth photographing.

I have come to run most things the same way. Strip the decoration, the hedging, the adjective doing the work of the verb. If the argument only works in full colour — with the right font, the right tone, the right framing — it is not an argument yet.

Black and white is not an absence of decision. It is the decision, made early, so that everything after it can be honest.