I often ask this question. I began my photographic journey using B&W medium format film back in 1968. I don’t think it is nostalgia, but I do have a preponderance to preferring monochromatic images. Colour is very important in my life but it is always a toss up between deciding to make B&W images or colour. Of course, it is very much simpler when using my medium format or large format equipment because the decision has been made by what I have loaded into the magazines or dark slides. In that case I go out with the intention of making either colour or B&W. In a recent review of Jane Bown’s career she said that ‘colour got in the way’. I can see that for portrait work, however does the same apply to abstract images, or more correctly abstraction?

When it comes to digital, I reckon I can shoot an image with B&W in mind. One such image was made on Boxing Day. This morning, having wussed out of either a walk or a bicycle ride I set about manipulating this image as both as the eye saw it and how the mind’s eye saw it.

The colour version, in my mind is colder than the B&W.

Thoughts?