Jane Bown is one of my principal inspirations. Although her images were more portrait orientated, I still consider them to have great narrative and context well beyond a formal photograph.
The quote at the beginning of this article from Jane strikes a chord with me. The camera market these days is like a fast-moving train. Every month there seem to be new releases from all the main manufacturers; each proclaiming the newest camera will be better and faster and give you the ability to make better pictures.
And of course, from a technical standpoint, this may be true - especially for technical photography genres like Sports, Wildlife, Astro-photography etc.
Though the images that speak to me are always ones that have personality, depth, emotion and often..... no colour.