B&W vs. Colour showdown

When I first took up photography, my brother in law told me that shooting in b&w is much more difficult than shooting in colour. He was right. It's not simply the process that was more difficult, but seeing images that would translate from our world of colour to a world of black and white. Can I translate the intensity of a sunset in a black and white picture? It's a completely different message. Perhaps this is what Maclean meant when he said, "the world is in color, you have to work at black and white."

B&W and colour do carry different tones. Whenever I see black and white photographs, it always makes me nostalgic, like I'm looking at years before. But colour represents the present. Maybe that is just the construction of time in my head - b&w means the past, like when we had b&w television or silent films in black and white. Perhaps that is why I see it that way.

I found Mark's quote to be true and untrue. The fact is though, when I see a photograph with colour "that gets caught up in colour," it somehow gets me excited. Because in essence, colour reminds me of life and wouldn't the photograph be meaningful if it were showing the colour for that? There is a reason why people are attracted to colour. Though, at the same time, I can understand the certain amount of depth associated with a black and white photograph. By omitting colours, the viewer can see a more stark contrast in what the photographer is trying to say. However, I still don't think that colour is a distraction in any case, I think it merely enhances a good photograph.