I reflect here, on the difference between ‘glory light’ and ‘story light’, with the former being that strong dynamic lighting that creates a standalone image, whilst the latter is more subtle and consistent across a project set of images and lends itself to the telling of the story.

Glory light in B&W still looks fantastic. But because it talks of emotion, B&W is much more about the story. And story light, that individual shaft or subtle light, lighting someone’s face in the frame, but without being glorious, lends itself much more to telling the story. The story then is more about emotion, trying to get over what is the story, what is the image trying to say. That’s emphasised through B&W rather than colour where there is the distraction of ‘I know that scene, I know what it should look like’. That’s distracting away from ‘what is this image trying to say to me? What feeling do I get from this image? What is it that strikes me?’. That’s the story and that’s where B&W comes in, by abstracting and bringing emotion.