For some reason, human emotions — sometimes — can only be best presented in black and white photos.

Take a look a some of the photos which appear on the Smashing Magazine blog. The human emotions depicted in the black and white pictures there seem to be much stronger.

This photo of a native man of Borneo smoking a homemade cigarette is taken in colour but I like this version better. This man had previously appeared in this blog as “The Thinker“. Here are another collection of black and white pictures showcasing the power of the monochrome.

This black and white photo is deliberately taken with the shutter speed set at 1 second, with the ISO set at 1600 to achieve the effect of a whitewashed background.

Then I tweaked it further using a photo editor to create an unrealistically high contrast picture. I’m experimenting.