Sea Gypsies | Life in Black and White

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Sea Gypsies | Life in Black and White | Maiga Island Semporna Sabah

“Life is like a good black and white photograph, there’s black, there’s white, and lots of shades in between.” 

– Karl Heiner –

About this picture, actually I did both editing with this photograph, I mean I did edit this photograph in colors first but then I did not satisfied with the outcome and then I try to desaturate  a bit the colors which you can find the photograph in my flickr site and then I did a black and white version like what you looking at here. I like both but I like black and white the most.

It is not an easy decision to decide which one will work and which one won’t. For me a decision to turn any photograph into black and white always not an easy decision to make. I don’t have any recipe for that, but what I can tell you is that, I will do what feels right in my heart rather than look right in my eyes.

For this particular picture of a young Sea Gypsy boy paddling  a small boat not too far from Maiga Island in Sabah, I feels that by stripping away all of the colors and just leaving a monochromatic image, the pictures have more feels towards the boy. My concentration goes directly towards his expression, towards his excitement paddling the boat while I took his picture. Actually the boy was quite shy when I first approach him, but after a little while he get used being photographed.

We don’t see real life in black and white but life is full of colors but sometimes we can only feels what life is all about in black and white. maybe to someone will say, it is better to show happiness in colors rather than black and white but then again, black and white is not only for sad, sombre looking subject, black and white photograph is suitable for anything even in landscape photography but one thing for sure is that, not all pictures will look great in black and white, some photograph does look better in colors. More often than not, the best judgment when looking at a photograph is not to judge them from your eyes but through your heart. Off course you need to see it first from your eyes but then, your heart will determine whether it feels right or not.