Color or Black and White?

I’ve posted about this before, but it’s come up again so it’s time to think about it again.  That is how does one treat the question of whether an image is better in color or in black and white?

Now that characterization of the issue is a bit misleading because, like so many things, the issue isn’t as simple as wondering whether an image is better in color or in black and white.  You have times where you’re out photographing and you “see” the image in black and white, or you see it distinctly in color.  For those images the answer is usually straight-forward.  If your vision was correct, the image really only does work in one or the other.  The choice simply isn’t there.  The image will often work in one, but not the other.  

The question really only arises when you have an image that you are working with in the field, one that you feel is very compelling but you don’t have the depth, and certainty, of why it seems to work.  Face it, this is a learning process and sometimes you tread into the unknown because that’s how you learn and get better (and suffer some fantastic failures!).  It’s those images that will occasionally beg the question.  Those images that you must work on after the fact to continue learning.  You don’t develop the raw image to the image in your mind as you made it, you continue to develop the image to continue learning from it.  

Scanning through my images from our February trip to Bandon, an image caught my eye that made me stop and begin working on it.  There was no doubt that what attracted me in part was the brilliant colors from the pre-dawn sky reflected in the water patterns formed from the gently sloped, low tide sands.  It took a bit, but I managed to develop an image that made me feel the way I felt that morning.

As I studied the image afterwards, I realized that there were a lot of qualities in the image (distinct forms created by light and dark tonal values) that may work in black and white as well.  So I converted the image into a black and white (as easy as checking a box) and . . . it seemed lifeless.  

Knowing what I know about black and white imagery, I told myself that it’s not as simple as converting from one to another - but that if the elements were there I simply had to develop them properly for black and white.  So I went to the next image in the sequence and started all over again.

While I’m still not totally pleased with the skies, I am pleased with how the eye settles on the foreground sand patterns before rising up to the rock.  

The lesson here is that seeing in color and seeing in black and white are two very different things.  And even when an image has strengths in both, development of each of the images cannot the same.  It’s not as simple as checking the “black and white” box.  But then, why should it be?  

The skills of learning to see strong forms and distinct tonal values that work in black and white almost always benefit a color image, just like the composition of a well-composed color image works in black and white - composition, form and tonal values are universal.  Color doesn’t always help, or read well, in black and white.  That is what I think my skies problem is in the image above.  (I may need to figure something out for the skies - a good opportunity to learn the full capabilities of Capture One).  

So the question really isn’t “is it better in color or black and white,” it’s what can I learn from and create with each, when that is possible.  If I figure out a solution for the sky in the above image, I would readily print and hang each of them.  I probably wouldn’t show them together, but each is compelling in its own way.  

That said, in this case I think color.