For Cee’s Black and White Challenge: pairs.
These two were taken in black and white very long ago:
Watson was my grandfather’s oldest brother.
Odd couples
Tag Archives: Black & White
A little bird
Late fall close-ups
Oakleaf & raindrop with sunburst 
Lichen on a cherry tree. 
Tiny box leaves lit by the sun. 
Maple samaras. 
Camelia bud and the stamens from a spent bloom. 
Rosebud and rosehip.
All of these were converted to black and white using Nik Silver Effects Pro.
November nature in black and white
Original 
Simple desaturation. 
Low key Nik filter 
Black and white with increased contrast (using G’mic).
Original 
Simple desaturation 
Grayscale 
Nik B&W fine art low key filter
Original 
Nik fulll dynamic B&W filter. 
Nik B&W fine art low key filter.
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.
Light and dark
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.
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.
This week Hey Jude for Photo Challenge #46 asked for black and white focusing on contrast.
North island textures
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.
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.
Natural textures-in black and white
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.
Clouds 
Grass 
Ripples and shadows 
Clematis seedheads 
Raindrops on a fallen leaf 
Bark
For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Patterns in nature.
and Heyjude’s 2020 Photo Challenge #44: Black and White with the instruction: Look for patterns.
Coming from behind
This is a really random assortment.
Just for fun here is an antique-y sort of effect applied to a couple of them.
For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Back of things, and of course the back of things is also a Perspective, for Becky of Winchester’s July Squares.
Store signs in black and white
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.
Black and white
I’ve been spending time this week reading about current events, and experimenting with black and white photo effects.
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.
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.
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.
