It’s easy to suggest that photographing something in color doesn’t take much effort. It’s now the ‘default’ for most image-makers, and our exposure to color photography is so frequent that it has become increasingly hard to bring to the fore photographers who work with color in a deliberate, personal and dynamic way. However, the saturation of imagery today has also allowed us to become more self-critical about color photography. It permits us to really scrutinize exceptional bodies of work and bring to light photographers whose images are more than just composition, lighting and structure, but rather live and breathe color.

Remembering the first time I resonated with a photograph that focused on color made me re-think the very structure of my own imagery. Color photography has the power to create different levels of depth which traditional black and white does not. While black and white acts to abstract a scene, color can make it hyper-real.

The following list brings to light contemporary photographers working in this field whose works demonstrate excellence in color – Photographs who, in my opinion, achieve a level of uniformity in structure, framing, subject matter with color as the main protagonist.