In the world of filters I had often wondered why do black and white images look so cool. You would find them on website front pages, birthday cards, magazines and what not.
But the mystery surrounding the human obsession about the binary colors seem unexplained at best. What is it in those colors that attracts us?
Why do pictures in black and white look more beautiful than their colored counterparts?
There are several reasons to begin with, Lets have a look at some of them.
Uncluttered,
Images in black and white are so uncluttered, clear and devoid of unnecessary distractions. The crux of the image or the main focus becomes painfully obvious when seen in black and white. In colored images the said crux is easy to mix. This phenomenon can be extrapolated to explain why paintings with minimal colors are often the ones valued extraordinarily.
See beyond,
Images in black and white are often used to help viewers see beyond the image itself. The patterns, textures and depth suddenly becomes obvious in a BW picture. Suddenly the curves, valleys and peaks become relevant and provide a new perspective to the image.
More Objectivity
We often attribute many of our emotions to the things we see around us. It is said that we subconsciously attribute our emotions to colors around us. For Example, red is often attributed to passions, green is attributed to envy, yellow with prosperity (or at least that is what we are led to believe in India). When looking at BW images, we are free of our individual biases and hence see the subject with much clarity.
Higher Visual interaction
Though partially correct, there is more to the explanation given above than that seems on surface. When seeing a B/W image, we see what we want to and not what the photographer wanted us to. This leads to a much higher visual interaction than the brain planned on having with the image. This is what interests it and the image suddenly looks a lot beautiful because now it means something. To illustrate the idea further, let us consider an image of a fruit basket, when you look at it, your mind will immediately start filling the requisite colors in the image and piece together information from your past experiences to make the picture look whole again, this will inevitably lead to higher brain functioning than expected and thereby lead to a piqued interest altogether.
Related Reading,
Using the concepts above, you too can create an awesome ebook cover,
And you can create your very own color palette.
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