I find my photography tends to develop in phases. I’ll shoot mainly colour for a few months then shoot mainly Black & White for a few months.
This summer has seen me shoot a lot of Black & White.
The reasons are complex. Most people think of summer shots as being colour, like the shot of the flower basket above.
This last weekend saw me taking a lot of photographs, while I was working on Sunday shooting for a client and providing them with nice colour photographs as they expected, I always give them a few Black & White options.
The Saturday saw me in Lincoln as it was Lincoln Folk Week shooting for myself. There was lots of dancing and events going on. Many of the dancers were wearing colourful outfits, but once I got home I found myself converting many of the photographs to Black & White.
The reasons were mainly two fold. First, some of the shots were taken in bright midday sun, like the shot above, the very bright light and high contrast was at the limit of the dynamic range of the camera. While a lot of post processing did get it back under control, it was easier to produce a Black & White image which suited the lighting conditions better and this also brings me to the second reason, I just think some of these shots look better in Black & White.