I came to black and white late. For years it felt like a filter, a way to make ordinary pictures look serious.
Then I spent a winter shooting only monochrome film, and I started to understand. Without colour to lean on, every frame has to work on structure alone.
What remains
Trees become lines. Skies become tone. A face becomes texture and shadow. You see the bones of a picture.
I still shoot colour most of the time. But when I am stuck, I switch back to black and white to remember how to see.