It is always amazing to me how completely the lack of color can change the feel of an image. Black and White photos of even the most mundane of subjects can often feel more artistic or somehow more meaningful. What I’ve found is that for some image types the removal of color takes away context and forces even more abstraction. In this case the image is of star trails shot with a telephoto lens over 35 minutes. With color the image shows the variety of star types, blues, oranges, and reds that show in long exposures. Here the trails are just white lines across the black canvass, and without the context I’ve provided above would mean very little. But for me the effect just increases the sense of wonder I get from an extended look at the night sky.
