Hey, look what came in the mail today! I’ve been looking forward to this!
You might’ve noticed that I shoot predominantly black and white. I will do color for clients or there is the rare occasion that I actually prefer a color version of the image. That being said I’ve recently learned about photographer, Saul Leiter, and the work he did in color has really appealed to me.
From Wikipedia:
Saul Leiter (December 3, 1923 – November 26, 2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as the New York School of photography.[1] His work is in the collections of many prestigious public and private collections.
I really love Saul’s black and white photography (I’ll be ordering a two book set on that soon) but what really caught my attention was the color work that he did. Where Saul’s black and white composition is beautifully minimal, the composition of his color images was more complex, a lot of layers. The colors are rich, but not too saturated. A lot of it is shot through window glass or other framing devices, combining several main objects often overlapping. Really beautiful stuff. This is really inspiring me to do more with color.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this because if you’re a photographer who prefers black and white, take a look at Saul Leiter’s color photography and see if you have a similar reaction to it. Feel free to comment below, I’d like to know if it effects you the same way!
Here’s a link to a board I’ve setup on Pinterest that shows examples of both black & white and color work of Saul Leiter. (note: some images NSFW)
