What is it about my photos?

This might seem like an odd question to you. But it is one that I have had people say to me. Some people have looked at my pictures and have said that there is something about it that they cannot put their finger on.

So I thought I explain what it is about my photos, especially the later work that makes my photos unique and gives it that hard to explain something that some people have mentioned to me.

I did have to think about it for a bit mind you because when they said that, it kind of threw me for a curve, because I didn’t get what they were saying. But then I realised what it is.

You see I am severely colourblind. Yet I shot in colour. I know that colour is not as cool or as serious as black and white and while most people try to capture the sense of photography by HCB or Kapp, Taro, Smith, Miller or Frank to name a handful of great photographers, I go with Leiter, Meyerowitz, Parr and Eggleston and prefer the look of a photo in colour.

The thing is that while I am shooting an image, looking through the viewfinder at the scene, I cannot see the colours around me so clearly. I shoot looking at the light and shade, and focus on the composition and the shapes. I shoot, in effect as if I am shooting in black and white. Then when i process the image, having shot in colour, the camera record the colour information which I then heighten in post to give it the high saturation of Kodachrome, with bold conrtast and strong blacks to help me to see the colours better.

As a result you have images that were shot in what to be was very low colour tone, but processed in high saturation and tint and because of this the images I come up with have a strong personal touch to them that no other photographer will be able to come up with.

It is a drum I bang all too often. The biggest and most important thing in photography is not the tool that the photographer uses to capure the images. It is the photographer themselves who makes the image. We all have our own unique take on the world and when a photographer learns the skills of shooting with a camera and not just relying on the smartphone camera so they can point and shoot, and also learns to translate the way they look at the world into an image, then they will take a scene, even one that is done to death and make it look different and better.

But more than just another occasion where I say that photography is not about whether a person shoots digital, film, colour or black and white, using 35mm or one of those old fashioned wet-plate cameras from the 1800s, what I mostly want you to take from this post is the explanation from me as to what it is that makes my photographs feel a bit different, if you feel that way. And that is down to the cross over between how I am shooting and what I am seeing, mingled with what the camera records and how I process it all together in the studio because I don’t just point and shoot. When I work, I work to a set out discipline that governs what I shoot, how I shoot and how I then mix it together in processing. It’s this painterly approach to work that will enable me to capture and craft strong images.

If you would like me to shoot strong photographs for you, please contact me using the box below and I will get back to you promptly.

All the best.

© Vincent S. Coster 2026