Why do more often than not, great photographers opt to shoot in black and white and not in color? Ansel Adams, Sebastião Salgado, Cartier Bresson, Capa, Diane Arbus, Daido Moriyama, Henri Lartigue, only to name a few, favored Black and White over color. Why is that?
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Technology availability at their time of activity is one factor.
But mainly, yourself being a cherry picking prick.
Plenty of other renowned photographers are shooting color.
Steve McCurry, Annie Leibovitz, Saul Leiter, Joel Santos, Nils Jorgensen, Eggleston, Martin Parr, Bruno Barbey, just to stick to famous ones.
Just because you're uneducated doesn't mean there's a pattern. Also you forgot Fan Ho, he's much better than Henri Lartigue or Diane Arbus imo.
Different reasons, probably mainly personal preference. Pretty sure Ansel Adams shot mainly B&W for archival purposes
>>2727552
How many had access to modern digital sensors? Yup... that's why.
There was a time when color photography was not taken very seriously in the art world. This changed roughly in 70s, when a few photographers pushed some boundaries and showed you could do good work with color film, despite b&w inherently having a higher possible resolution.
For photojournalists, B&W film is waaay more flexible than color film, in the field.
Once digital cameras came into play, the doors were open and you could do whatever you wanted.
Most of the dudes that SpergBus Freakout up there shot exclusively b&w for a time as well, even if they are known for their color work.
If you really want to know why, you're gonna have to do some research into what these photographers thought. Everyone here is smarmy arrogant prick that only knows what they read on the internet, so we're probably not gonna be much help.
also
>great photographers
>Annie Leibovitz
NOPE
>>2727627
At least two of those guys still shoot black & white, but thanks for taking time out of your busy STEM job day to share with us.
>>2727571
putting liebowitz, leiter, eggleston or parr in the pantheon with hcb, salgado, ansel, arbus is just retarded.
>liebowitz, leiter, eggleston or parr
art school cunts who shill their work through their society connections
>hcb, salgado, ansel, arbus
people who take stunning photographs
Which is not to say anything about the colour or b&w argument, it's pretty much a nonsense.
But christ, pick better examples.
>>2727882
>art school cunts who shill their work through their society connections
I'm sure you know that Ansel Adams totally belongs in that category too, right? And HCB pretty much has to be the absolute ultimate example of that. He was literally the bored rich kid with a camera before the cliche even existed.
>>2727888
excuse me, did you just compare HCB to isi?
>>2727915
kek-a-doodle doo!
color was newely developed and not widely available during the careers of some of those photographers, and you've clearly never picked up Ansel Adams in Color. idiot.
>>2727931
Kodachrome has been around and widely available since 1935, and other color processes long before it.
The truth is, color photography just wasn't accepted as art until the 60's.
>>2727932
I don't include Kodachrome because the lack of post processing finesse and difficulty in making seamless prints onto paper made it more of a snapshooter's film than a serious photographer's film. while Kodachrome is taken seriously today, it wasn't then.
Salgado once said in an interview that he shoots in black and white because color is too distracting. That's that main point, it's very distracting.
If you have a room with three fascinating people sitting around a table and the table is bright red, the picture is kinda ruined.
>>2727882
>man jumps over puddle
>stunning
>stands at top of stairs waiting for person
>stunning
>sits behind italians eating, waits for something interesting to happen
>stunning
>>2727935
what if they're all wearing red hats
>>2727936
Duh...
>>2727932
>The truth is, color photography just wasn't accepted as art until the 60's.
True that. There were early excellent color photographers such as Nickolas Murray but they weren't regarded to the same level.
Also it was difficult af to master color printing, difficult enough that creative color photography such that of Ernst Haas was generally not noticed. (Even Kodachrome 12, the denser one, was discontinued and Haas had to run for old stock in order to keep shooting.)
So, unfortunately, color photography only became art when snapshits became art, and technical expression was neglected. Before velvia, ilfochrome etc it was considered a too literal mean -or too messy to bother with-, and only with digital means color processing/manipulation became really common.
>>2727939
this desu
Probably because abstraction, showing the world in a different way, is artsy and showing it how it is is amateurish.
