Technicolor or Monochrome Mormons?

Yesterday, I was covering Elders Matthew Reed and Caden Scott of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for a story the Appeal is doing on how Memphians, outside of Mormon culture, view that faith. Reed and Scott are serving their two year missionary time in Memphis walking around door-to-door sharing their faith with a focus on Hispanic neighborhoods. I learned about this when I first tried calling Reed and discovered his voicemail was in spanish. My first thought was, "Okay...I hope this is the right guy because I didn't hear a name in there and I hope he understands and speaks English too; otherwise, I have no idea how I am going to make contact with him." We had a good chuckle about that when I met up with them.

The fever of heat Memphis has suffered the last week or so finally broke with some much deserved rain. I was a little concerned that no one would be around when the elders would be doing their door-to-door sharing, but the rain was light, and there were quite a few people out enjoying the cooled off air that we came across this group of hispanic men.

I'm a big fan of layers in my images, letting my eye bounce around the frame, and usually I don't like shooting from behind someone in my work. I find eye contact between people in the frame give a greater sense of story than not, but I find the body posture of the man in the foreground to be interesting enough to dust off that photo class on faceless people from my memory. Also, I like how the guy on the far right is framed in the arms.

When I get a photo from an assignment that I am satisfied with and concerned putting up on this blog, I do like to make a color and b&w version of the photo. I'm a really big fan of old-school, b&w white photojournalism and with everything I do for work being shot in color, I enjoy the variety and the simplicity of storytelling b&w can offer. All that to say, this image has stumped me as to whether it should go on here in color or b&w, so I'm putting up both. Ultimately, I think color would win because of the repetition of blues in the frame and the faceless man's posture stands out a little bit better. Still, I love how this composition looks in b&w and I like how the wrinkles and raindrops on the faceless man's shirt stand out and again, just the simplicity of it.

Would love to hear your thoughts.