Black and white with increased contrast (using G’mic).
Barnacle rock.
Original
Simple desaturation
Grayscale
Nik B&W fine art low key filter
Wren in the grass.
Original
Nik fulll dynamic B&W filter.
Nik B&W fine art low key filter.
Beach, woods & sky.
I don’t shoot in black and white, but I took these photos on a walk yesterday planning to process them in Black and White for Hey Jude’s 2020 Photo Challenge #47: photograph nature in Black and White and experiment with high and low key effects.
Some photos from the past couple of weeks that have a strong contrast between light and dark.
A high contrast sunset.
Seed head of Lily of the Nile (agapanthus)
November sky-high structure
November sky-soft
Asters with raindrops.
Close-up of aster with raindrops.
The intimate tangle of branches really stand out when the color is removed.
Black and white photos with high contrast.
While the contrast between light and dark is fundamental to black and white, I also find myself drawn to contrast in sharpness of detail and texture. You can see that in several of the photos above.
Sometimes it is the close ups that give you a real sense of place:
Shadows and textures really make the carving below. I think it looks more dramatic in black and white. The colors distract.
A Maori carving in a meeting house at the treaty grounds in Waitangi.
We spent a couple of weeks, amazing, delightful weeks, on the north island of New Zealand last January. It feels like more than 11 months ago. We were able to see our son over the Chinese New Year. He went back and while he was in the air going back the state department sent out its “do not travel to China” message. (I have some very pithy ideas about the US state department.)
Seeing him again is not in the cards in the foreseeable future, so I am sooo happy that we had that time right before everything closed down.
Every so often I take a picture because the pattern of the light catches my attention. While these are not exactly regular patterns they do have regularity to them.
Japanese anemone.Commuter or shopper in ChinaMy husband on the city walls of YorkWe wound up behind this truck for quite a while. It seems like he was reading our minds.
Just for fun here is an antique-y sort of effect applied to a couple of them.
I kind of like this effect, like he is materializing from mist.I couldn’t resist applying the old-time, romantic sort of look to the mighty johns…just for a giggle.
As I mentioned in an earlier post I’ve been experimenting with black and white photo processing. I’ve also been trying to get my photos a bit better organized. These two have come together for Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge this week: some photos from trips I made to China, specifically Shandong Province, over the years, focusing on the signs on store front signs.
I used Nik Silver Efex Pro, an older version of it that I got some times ago, while it was a free plug-in for the GIMP. I think you have to pay for Nik now.
If you click on any of the pictures it will expand and you can scroll through them at a larger size. Some of them got quite small in the tiled gallery.
I’ve been spending time this week reading about current events, and experimenting with black and white photo effects.
This year June has been a month of roses and raindrops.
One trick I learned a few years ago was to look at a photo in black and white, it brings aspects of composition into focus that one misses in color. Sometimes something that seems almost incidental in a color photo will really jump out at you.
Black and white of the yellow rose brings out the textures of the raindrops.
This is a time to listen, with our ears, and our hearts and minds. To put aside our opinions and really try to imagine walking in the shoes of others. It recurred to me that looking at things from a perspective of black and white may be a metaphor: it’s time to look at things in a totally new way.
With black and white inverted the shape of the rose jumps out.
As a conventional sort of person, the current events of the corona virus and the brutality of police toward citizens are really challenging me. But reading and listening, and trying to do so from other points of view to understand seem to be a necessary first step…Definitely before espousing opinions.
A knife sharpener uses his bike for both transportation and to drive his knife sharpener.A seamstress drives her sewing machines with repurposed bicycle wheels.A birthday girl on her new bike.Bike under a tree near a rural school.