black and white or colour

some photos i take i have a look at in black and white and colour. it’s sometimes hard to decide which looks better. black and white can look more classic and arty. one photo i couldn’t decide about was the recent frost on ealing common.

i have added a few more frost photos of ealing common to the ealing LIP group photo blog (november page 2). but i put the frost one with the dog in black and white.

so…

which do you prefer of these two – colour | black and white ??

This Post Has 14 Comments

  1. Hufi

    Oh, that’s a hard decision.
    I like both – there is no better…

  2. Stewart

    I’d almost always say black and white… but not this time. I like the contrast of the cold frost and the warmth of the sun in the colour shot.

  3. LauraHD

    Colour. The orange of the sunshine glinting through the trees is the making of the shot for me.

  4. Richard Pendrill

    Colour most definitely. You lose all the atmosphere and contrasting temperatures in the B&W.

  5. Anders

    For this one I would prefer colour. same reason as Stewart.
    Great picture..

  6. gayle

    somewhat surprisingly – colour – i would nomally say B&W but agree with the others – something is lost in the B&W – though that is good too ;0)

  7. Nic Dempsey

    I prefer the colour but the B&W is good too…
    It’s just a great photo..

  8. Blair Cameron

    I love the warmth of the colour shot, and think it sells the shot better than the black and white. The contrasts in the BW didn’t thrill me – too much grey I think – but I did notice the dog more as an interest point of the BW shot.
    Regardless, I do love the shot. Must have been cold?
    =) B

  9. Ron

    Color. (USA reader here. Thus the odd spelling.) I like the golden hues playing off the white frost. Nice shot.

  10. Jeff Moulton

    Allow me to be a bit contrary to the current consensus. I prefer the B&W (which is normal for me anyway). This color photo looks to me like a B&W photo with the golden hue added in, it feels like an effect. I know it is the other way around, but it doesn’t come off that way looking at them fresh to me.

  11. jonny

    thanks – this is helpful…
    most people both here and that i have spoken to prefer colour with a few preferring the black and white. i’m still unsure!

  12. Laura

    Colour- you loose some of the details in the bright whites and dark blacks of the other shot. It could just be that you need to mess around in your editing software a bit more to get the details, and the right “temp” for the b&w though. It definately has loads of potential.

  13. themerryrose

    i like the b&w best, then again i prefer b&w photos.

  14. Robb

    I love black and white a lot of the time. I tend to shoot in raw and then make the decision later with my canon. I have an olympus OM-1 which is usually either loaded with black and white or redscale film (http://www.flickr.com/groups/redscale/).
    However, in this case I prefer the warm looking sun coming through the cold frost!

Leave a Reply