Over the past 20 years technology has advanced at lightning speed. During this time there have been many huge advances in cameras and camera equipment. These days all cameras have auto focus, LCD screens so you can see your photo the instant it was taken and some cameras can even add data to the photo to give an exact GPS point where the photo was taken in the world.
By taking your photos in colour, you then have the option of changing them to black & white. However if shooting in black & white, you don’t have the option of changing them colour.
Looking back two decades, the majority of people were unaware of the evolution that photography was about to undertake. In the 1990’s photographers were still using film to take their photos. There was the choice of shooting film in traditional black & white or shooting in colour unless you opened the camera and changed the film roll. Back then as nobody knew any differently and so everyone was happy to shoot in one medium or the other. Fast forward 20 years to where we are today and the vast majority of people using cameras are only using digital. Film has been left as a distant memory, used only by diehard traditionalists or young art students discovering film for the first time.
I took this shot in colour and then converted it to black & white with my computer. I prefer the black & white version, however I know I have it in colour should I later need it.
One of the most liberating things the modernisation of technology has brought us is that we now have greater control to choose what we want. These days when it comes to photography, with the one camera we can choose if we want to shoot photos in black & white or in colour with out having to change anything more than a setting on the camera… easy! No having to carry around and pull out rolls of different film like back in the good ol’ bad ol’ days.
Fakebook…, some people have a sense of humour!
Though digital cameras allow us the choice of shooting photos in black & white, it doesn’t mean we should choose this setting. This is because if you shoot in black and white, you will never have the option of seeing your image in colour. However if you always shoot photos in colour, you can then easily convert them to black and white on the computer. This way you can have both a colour and black and white version of your image. It’s better to have more options than not.
What if you just happen to have your camera on the black & white setting and take the photo of the decade? When you send your beautiful image to the magazine publisher they say, “Yeah nice, but do you have it in colour?”. This is not to say black & white photos are not as important as those in colour. Some photos will always look better in black & white. In spite of this, if they are shot in black & white, they will only ever be black & white. If we always shoot in colour, we can convert our images to black & white, sepia or anything that our imaginations take a fancy to and this is the reason why it is better to shoot black & white photos in colour.