I consider myself a pretty happy and optimistic person.  I smile most of the time.   And maybe that’s why I love color in my images so much.  Fiery orange sunsets, lush green foliage, and frigid blue ice are usually the best way to convey how I felt about a place.  But I think the opposite is sometimes true with architecture.  What color represents the awe you feel when you stand in front of the tallest tower in the world, the Tokyo Skytree?  At night, this tower lights up various beautiful shades from the rainbow.  That color helps clearly separate it from the rest of the city, but it makes the tower feel more playful than grandiose.  It’s beautifully stunning either way, but the stark, simple contrast of black and white captures this place best.  Black and white allows the freedom to hide all the distractions of everyday life in Japan.  The distraction of blue skies and green grass are gone.  All that’s left behind in black and white is, for me, the truth.  That you feel incredibly small in the face of such an amazing feat of design and engineering.  When I look across this river, I don’t see anything but the Skytree.

I edited this image using Lumenzia, Photoshop, and Lightroom.  For comparison, here’s the original image straight out of the camera.