Joel Meyerowitz

The lesson: take color seriously. Meyerowitz quit his job in 1962 to become a photographer after being inspired by Robert Frank, and he was among the pioneers of color film in the 1960s. In 1972 he switched for good to large-format color, which led to his first book, Cape Light, made on Cape Cod. Compare his early 35mm street frames with the slower Cape Light pictures and you can watch color change from a detail into the subject itself: a red coat, a pale evening sky, a sign glowing at dusk. A beginner can borrow that straight away by choosing one color to hunt for on a walk and ignoring everything else.