[Discussion] Grey scale photography?

Grey scale photography, it's coming back isn't it? At least of what I can see is that almost everywhere new young photographers start with black and white material instead of pictures with rich colours. I personally believe greyscales give a more 'minimal' view of the art of photography, accepting the loss of colours to make a shot that enforces emotion.

What do you people think about it?

A few amazing examples:








"..But it is definitely more hit-and-miss for a photographer working in black-and-white to anticipate whether or not the full meaning and contemporary relevance of their imagery will be understood in light of color art photography’s dominance. At the beginning of this millennium, I found it difficult to keep my confidence that photography’s monochrome history continued to exert a strong influence on the way we see...



A career-oriented art photographer (and maybe this is the first generation of artists who can consider it a “career”) sticks very close to the now well-traveled path of contemporary color photography’s aesthetic homage and partial remembrance of, for example, gorgeous Kodachrome, or the beam of an enlarger. In a career-oriented era, perhaps this strategy is wiser than trying to beat a path through the resistance to presenting imagery in other ways and forms that actually respond to the potential of digitization. Of course I feel bemused at why a nascent art photographer would be so openly conservative as to adhere to apparent conventions, and at my most pessimistic, I wonder if there’s too much “trying-to-be-like” Eggleston, Shore, et al., and too little “creative-departure-from” the stellar standards that they have set...

I am sure I’m not alone in beginning to think that the more complex, messy, unfashionable, and broad territory of black-and-white photography is where we are going to find some of the grist to the mill in photography’s substantive and longer-term positioning within art..."

From Charlotte Cotton's The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

I agree, I think grey scale photography gives more depth to a photo, emotionaly-wise, by taking away a dimension. It seems like, because of the lack of colour, that the viewer is challenged to use his own imagine when looking at the photo, which makes it more interesting to look at.


But it sometimes is a tool to make bad pictures look 'cool' by amature photographers. That's a downside though.


But cool pictures you posted there!

Horsehead wrote:But it sometimes is a tool to make bad pictures look 'cool' by amature photographers. That's a downside though.

Well that tends to improve the picture a little bit, you'll still see it's an amateur photo though.

What's a really cool thing to do with grey scale photo's is to put 1 object back in it's original (or a totaly abstract) color, to focus the attention.

EDIT by Sknw___:

Agreed, sometimes leaving in some colour can be very satisfactory in the end result. Bbut there is one difference, as you said you will be focussed on the colours instead of on the entire image, and that's something I'm a bit less fond off though.