Re-Color My World...

   When I first made this photograph back in July of 2005, I was firmly in the monochrome mode.  Fortunately, I saved the original file and I recently revisited some of those early photographs and looked at them in color.

   I loved this in black and white but I think I love it much more in color.  That streak of teal blue amid the sea of rust colored net is wonderful.  So much of my view of the world has altered since I've started to embrace color in my work.  I've not given up monochrome work,  there is still such an attraction for me to the simplicity of the black and white image, but I don't shy away from color now.

   I've said it a number of times in the past but it bears repeating.  Photograph in color...always!  You can always desaturate the image later but retain the original color file.  There is so much more you can do with the much larger color file.

    Not far from the pile of rust colored net were these chains with another teal colored rope on top.  I think I was first attracted to these things because of the color but I chose to render them in black and white because, well, that is how I looked at the world back then.

   Now, if I was walking along the dockside in South Uist in the Western Isles, where these photographs were made, I would follow the color.  I'm sure there were buoys and traps and other objects that I could have added to this collection.

    Do you have any old black and white files that you can revisit, and re-color?  Perhaps, you have some favorite color images that you can convert to black and white.  I assure you, it will be an eye opening experience  which ever way you try this exercise.

    Photographs, even old ones, always have something else they can tell us because the eyes with which we looked at them back then are not the eyes that we look at them with now.