Old Delhi, India, 2010 (©Ian Mylam)

Here’s the fourth image in my series of ‘ones which got away’ the first time around. I did like this image at the time I shot it, but just couldn’t get it looking right in colour. I remember at the time I made this photograph that I was reluctant to drop the colour and convert to monochrome because the conceptual contrast between the bright, cheerful colours in her headscarf and her decidedly unfriendly demeanour appealed to me – a contrast compounded by the dark Ray Bans, which masked any empathy, warmth and humanity I might have been able to see in her eyes.  So I ended up leaving this one unfinished, and it languished, forgotten, in the archive until I happened upon it again a few days ago.  Coming to the raw file with fresh eyes, I decided to re-visit the possibility of converting the image to black and white, and realised that I liked the image better in the absence of colour after all. Although the conceptual contrast I mentioned above is missing in the monochrome picture, I feel that the starkness and mood of the low-key black and white rendering is more in sympathy with her stony expression.

As usual, click on the image to see it bigger.