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I was recently asked by a client if I could make a print they wanted to purchase black & white and only leave part of the clothing in colour.  This is a well known technique, often referred to as "selective colour" or "spot colour". I replied to the client politely declining the request and this is why:

Primarily, my reasons for not producing selective colour images are that I just don't think they look good. I spend time getting my colours right and if I do work in black and white, it's about the lighting and the contrast. Mixing the two together always looks wrong to me, becoming very unnatural looking, jarring and garish, upsetting the flow of the image. I have only created one image using this technique (see above) and I have seen only a couple of other examples from other photographers that I feel work, but in general I find that images that have been selectively coloured do not work. One of my biggest issues is with selectively coloured champagne glasses in wedding photos, where the subtle yellows of champagne are made to stand out like a sore thumb and without trying to be crude, the photographer has made it look like the bride was drinking a "sample" (something that you wouldn't even think about if the photo was either in colour or black and white)!

My secondary reason for not producing these types of images is the "gimmicky" nature of selective colour.  Remember when people first started creating digital images and there was an almost obligatory use of the lens-flare effect? I think selective colour comes from the same camp. When your technology obsessed friend shows you what his latest hi-fi can do with features such as  "digital sound-space simulation" or "enhanced audio matrix" and you hear a classic album sounding like it's being played on a boom box in a church - amazing... but are you really going to listen to your whole music collection like that?

The bottom line is that should I produce an image in the selective colour style for a client, others may see it and get a false idea of my style. This could go against me in two ways; they could hire me to produce images like it or they could take a dim view of me and I could lose a potential client. There is the argument that I am being paid so I should do what the customer wants. Yes, there is a point there, but as an extreme example, you wouldn't hire Rembrandt to create Andy Warhol style images. I feel like I would be compromising my artistic integrity and undermining my confidence in my work if I did something that didn't believe in just because I was paid to do so. So I may lose a sale from declining this request, but there is always a price to pay for staying true to your beliefs.

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