Exercise Find a street that particularly interests you – it may be local or further afield. Shoot 30 colour images and 30 black and white images in a street photography style. In your learning log, comment on the differences between the two formats. What difference does colour make? Which set do you prefer and why?
This was an interesting exercise, I choose Victoria Embankment, Westminster, London for the exercise. I choose this location as, it’s always busy and there’s lots of variety in the streets. Situated in the shadow of Big Ben and the Houses of Commons, just a short walk from the London Eye, it is an ideal location for street style photography.
Street photography like this lends itself to mono and it was difficult not to just shoot all the images black and white. That said, any image where the hue and colour really make the images pop, it is essential to have the colour. Other times. Colour adds much needed context, for example, when taking a photo of a London bus you need to see that it is red otherwise it’s just a bus, the same could be said for the Red telephone boxes.
When shooting geometric patterns or anything with high contrast, the images cry out to be changed to mono. Some images are almost black and white already and need very little to convert them.
Out of the two sets I prefer the mono set, I find there is something about black and white that focuses the viewer, makes them concentrate on the image, monochrome strips back images to what’s important in the image. In my personal opinion it’s mono all the way but sometimes colour is essential.
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