Today's fading photography trend is...

Selective Color. This is also know as hand coloring, partial coloring, or "make the eyes blue and everything else black and white" technique. I'm going to attack selective coloring today, but don't get me wrong, it has it's place. It's place just happens to be in 1995...some 15 years ago. Wow, that was a long time ago. In 1995, the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson started and ended, the 49ers beat the Chargers in the Super Bowl, Sheryl Crow's "All I Want to Do" won best album, Hootie and the Blowfish won best new artist, Braveheart won best picture, and selective color started it's global domination.

15 years later, it's run its course and died. We do not tend to use a lot of selective color, hardly any at all. Pretty much none. That is of course unless it is requested. Selective color has faded so much into the background that you only see it with Photoshop or GIMP newbies. It's a cool technique to play with if you are a hobbyist or just having fun on a Friday night. However, if you are trying to create modern and timeless photos, avoid selective color. Selective color is a fad that has faded and will continue to do so.

To keep images relevant in any time period or decade stick to the basic principles of photography and avoid the fads and gimmicks limited by relevance in a specific time space. Below you will see two examples of selective color that you see all the time. Background in black and white and subject in black and white. The third image is our version of selective color. In which we've selected EVERYTHING to be in color. Let your images stand the test of time.





For those of you contemplating the fact that I did NOT do a great job with the selective color editing.....yeah, that'd be the point.