China – black & white
A trip to China, shot on an old camera and one fast prime, then quietly drained of colour.
The kit was a study in contrasts: an ageing Canon 400d body and a brand-new 50mm f1.4 lens. One fixed focal length, no zoom. Framing meant moving my own feet rather than turning a ring on the barrel, which is a slower way to work and, on a trip, probably the honest one.
The pictures are black and white, but the black and white was a colour job. All the tonal work happened in Adobe Lightroom 4 — the place where a photograph actually decides how to lose its colour, red by red and blue by blue.
No client, no brief. Just three sets, sorted the way the trip sorted itself: Animals, People, Places. The full sets still live on Flickr; a selection is here.
Black and white is a colour decision. You just make it in the edit.