The colors in this image are quite exotic – a rose colored mat matches the colors in her skirt and shirt, the warmth of the brown earth is picked up in the tan of the baskets, and the green onions make themselves boldly present. You can see it for yourself, posted in my worldisround.com travel article on Laos at: http://www.worldisround.com/articles/139137/photo106.html .

However, I also think this image functions very well in black and white because it places greater stress on the gracious body language of the vendor herself. There is no color to compete with her gesture of acknowledgement. She is, in essence, spontaneously and incongruously posing for us! She does so by leaning back, throwing her arm up, and running her hand through her hair. Just like those glamorous movie stars of the 1940s and 50 used to do. She never said a word to me. Yet she radiated warmth and pride.

I posted this image in color in my travel article because I was using it as expressive travel photography. And it worked very well. The gesture is still there, and so, are the warm, vivid colors that give her identity as a seller of onions in a marketplace. Without the colors, the image becomes something altogether different. An abstract, incongruously humane portrait of a Laotian market vendor posing as an archaic movie star would have posed 50 years ago. Once again, it is not a matter of asking which picture is “best.” Each of them tell a different story, and in a different way.