Colour Versus Black and White
This used to be a more complicated question that it is nowadays. I remember the “good ole days”, when you had to make a choice based on the kind of film loaded in the camera - colour, or black and white.
These days it’s so easy - you don’t have to choose. You can just take the photo in colour with a digital camera, then convert it to black and white with a few keystrokes in a photo editing program, such as Photoshop.
It is fun to play around with both, especially when photographing in-animate objects…
Here is the original photograph - in colour:
I almost decided to do the black and white with a bit of the original colour pulled through, but after seeing the full black and white result, I decided against it. Here it is:
I used Photoshop’s Gradient Map to convert the original colour image to black and white. I also tried out the Desaturate tool, but it didn’t give me the depth I wanted.
In a previous post I go through how to achieve black and white with different Photoshop tools. There are a few ways and the result will depend on your taste, as well as what suits the subject. Have a play!