Street Photography in Color

Color film street portrait of an older man holding a wire beside a green lamppost.

Color film street portrait of a woman in a pink hat and blue face mask.

Color analog street photograph of an older couple dancing in Mexico City.

Color film photograph of an older couple embracing while dancing in the street.

Color film street photograph of five men seated together beside a green wall.

Color analog street photograph of pedestrians crossing a busy Mexico City intersection.

Color analog street photograph of a man pushing a loaded trolley past an industrial gate.

I am mostly known for black and white street photography.

That is fair.

If you hand me a camera and let me choose, I will probably see the world in black and white.

But I also shoot color, especially for commercial and editorial work.

Sometimes clients land on my portfolio and assume I only work in black and white. I understand why. Most of the work I publish is monochrome.

But if a campaign needs color, I shoot color.

The way I work does not suddenly change because the photographs are in color.

I am still looking for the same thing:

People.

Why I usually choose black and white

Black and white is my default because it removes information I often do not need.

I care about the person in front of me.

Their eyes. Their expression. The way they stand. The clothes they chose that morning. The feeling they give off.

I can photograph somebody for two hours and not notice they have ketchup on their shirt because I am watching their face.

That probably tells you where my attention goes.

Color can be beautiful, but it adds another layer of decisions.

A blue object in the background can suddenly compete with the person. A red sign can pull your eye away from the expression.

In black and white, many of those distractions disappear.

That is useful to me.

When color makes the photograph better

I do not think color should be there simply because the camera can record it.

Sometimes color gives the photograph something black and white cannot.

A black dress against a white shirt.

A particular jacket.

Skin against a wall.

The color of a uniform.

Clothes that tell you something about the person before you know anything else about them.

I care about all of that.

What I do not do is stand in front of an orange wall waiting for somebody in an orange shirt to walk past so I can congratulate myself on the color coordination.

That is not really how I photograph.

I choose people more than I choose palettes.

If somebody has the wrong jacket, the wrong style, or simply does not interest me visually, I may never raise the camera.

Clothing and color are part of how a person presents themselves. They contribute to the picture, but they are not the reason the picture exists.

The person is.

Color film photograph of street vendors beneath red market awnings in Mexico City.

Color film photograph of a distant beachgoer standing at the turquoise Caribbean shoreline beneath a pale sky.

Color analog photograph of a woman in red standing at the edge of the ocean.

Color street photography for commercial work

Commercial street photography is where color often becomes important.

A lot of my commissioned work uses a candid street photography approach.

We work with real people, or approach strangers, and bring the product into a scene that still needs to feel natural.

In that situation, the product has to remain visible.

If a bottle, package, piece of clothing or branded object has a recognizable color, black and white can remove part of what makes the product identifiable.

That can be a problem.

I photographed Burger King in black and white because the agency wanted to experiment and the idea supported it.

For Coca-Cola, the red of the bottle became an accent against black and white imagery.

Those are creative decisions, not rules.

If the campaign needs full color, I shoot full color.

If black and white makes the idea stronger, I shoot black and white.

If the project needs both, I can work with both.

The brief comes first.

I have photographed on the streets of Mexico City, New York City, Istanbul, Bangkok and Copenhagen.

People still come before the palette

Shooting street photography in color does not turn me into a different photographer.

I am not suddenly hunting complementary colors or building the frame around a color wheel.

I am still trying to get close to somebody.

I want the picture to feel as if we have moved slightly inside the person’s head.

I want to catch something in the face, posture or gesture that makes you wonder what they are thinking.

The environment matters. Of course it does.

But I tend to use the environment to support the person rather than make the person a small element inside a beautifully designed scene.

That is true in black and white.

It is also true in color.

If a bright blue object in the background starts screaming louder than the subject, I may desaturate the blue in post.

I have no philosophical problem with that.

The photograph has a hierarchy, and I want the viewer to look where I was looking.

Color on film

There is one version of color photography I have always loved:

Color film.

When I was shooting color on film, I did not have the same resistance to it.

The colors were already there.

I did not need to sit in front of a computer deciding whether the greens should be warmer or the shadows should lean toward cyan.

I am not particularly interested in color grading, and I do not think it is the strongest part of what I do.

Film removed a lot of that.

You expose the frame, send the film away, and the color comes back with a character of its own.

That allowed me to enjoy color without obsessing over color.

Maybe that is the simplest way to explain my relationship with it.

For digital work, I have written separately about the Fujifilm cameras I recommend for street photography.

Color is a tool, not my identity

I do not want to invent a philosophy about color just because this is a color photography portfolio.

I am not obsessed with color.

I am obsessed with people.

Sometimes color helps me describe them.

Sometimes their clothing, skin, surroundings or a product in their hands needs color to say what the photograph needs to say.

Other times, color gets in the way, and I remove it.

The important thing is that the photograph still feels like mine.

Commercial color street photographer

If you found this page because you were wondering whether I shoot color commercially:

Yes.

I work with brands, agencies and publications on candid street photography, portraits, documentary-style campaigns and advertising work in both color and black and white.

You do not need to choose a photographer based on whether every photograph in their portfolio has the same treatment.

Choose them based on how they see people.

If you are planning a campaign and want street photography in color, send me the brief.

I can tell you how I would approach it.