Jason M. Peterson

A name many of you may be familiar with and those of you who don’t know it yet are certainly going to hear more often in the near future. Definitely this photographer counts among those living the social media dream. Of course, his success comes from an incredible photographic talent, however, without Instagram his masterpieces would certainly not be watched by more than 1 million people every day.

The photographer who’s been specializing in the art of black-and-white photography for 25 years, mentioned to the online magazine Mymodernmet that he keeps trying to capture human emotion in his pictures. This is the reason why he focuses on black-and-white photography. Because in his point of view color is just another aspect to prevent us from seeing and perceiving real emotion.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXQgfdsnW0M/?taken-by=jasonmpeterson

“To me, my photos aren’t about black and white at all. I am trying to capture human emotion, make the viewer feel something. Black and white helps focus on that emotion—color is one less thing to be in the way of seeing the feeling.” (Quote from an interview with Mymodernmet)

I find his thought very interesting and can’t help agreeing with him when it comes to color and photography. For instance, I’ve always considered taking color pictures to be easier and for a long time I didn’t know why. After reading Jason M. Peterson’s viewpoint I think colors can protect our own photographic subjects very often from highly critical eyes and from our own critical eyes as well. You really are distracted or keep focusing on color compositions and color atmospheres, which puts the subject in the background a bit. Now I’m thinking of trying out black-and-white photography more often. Just to see if my pictures will even then satisfy the high demands I place to myself as a photographer.

What do you think? Do you agree with me to a certain degree?