Adding Color + Breaking My Rules

Becoming more flexible with what I consider 'acceptable' photography has been a goal of mine over the past few years. I realized that I had set up certain guidelines in my mind about what makes a photo legitimate, which severely limited my opportunities to try new things.

This thought was reinforced recently when I heard an interview with an author – whose name escapes me – but they made an interesting point: having too many rules about what you are creating can turn it into something akin to paint-by-numbers, stripping away all the magic.

A while back, I began experimenting with adding color to my black and white photographs, just for fun. I would import a photo into Procreate on my iPad and simply play around. The more I did this, the more I found myself liking the resulting images. They don’t fit my old 'acceptable' criteria, and that makes me happy.

Here are a few of them. Thanks for looking!