Inspiration and Ideas

Last is street photography – perhaps the only genre of photography where people are more likely to shoot in monochrome than in color. Why would this be?

In some sense, it is down to the history of street photography. People like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Vivian Maier captured street life exclusively in black and white, and their influence has carried over to many people taking pictures today.

But at a deeper level, color can distract from street scenes in a way that is rarer in other genres. If you want viewers to focus on an interaction or subtle visual pun that you have captured, you certainly wouldn’t want to draw their eye away from the action with splashes of color (particularly in cities, where the position of colors in the frame is often haphazard). This is not to say that all good street photography must be black and white, but it shouldn’t be surprising that so much of it is.