Tag Archives: Black & White

China

A tour of Chinese lines in black and white

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Longji terraced fields near Guilin
Lines of terracotta soldiers in Xian.
Line-up of roof guardians at the Forbidden City in Beijing
Lines of greenhouses in Shandong Province from a train window.
Lines on the sidewalk in Shouguang.
Beijing Capital Airport Terminal 3.
Curved roof lines of Beijing-Nan Train Station.

A gallery of photos taken in China over the years that I thought were dominated by lines.

For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Lines.

Hawaii

Waves and rocks in black and white

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I associate Hawaii with color. But I took several photos during the blue hour and they aren’t exceptionally colorful, so I tried a few of them out in black and white.

Waves crashing on the lava rocks at the edge of Sandy Beach on Oahu in Hawaii. Photo processed using Raw Therapee and the GIMP with Nik's Silver Effects plug-in.
Morning waves at Sandy Beach on Oahu
Waves crashing on the lava rocks at the edge of Sandy Beach on Oahu in Hawaii. Photo processed using Raw Therapee and the GIMP with Nik's Silver Effects plug-in.
Morning waves at Sandy Beach on Oahu.
Waves crashing on the lava rocks at the edge of Sandy Beach on Oahu in Hawaii. Photo processed using Raw Therapee and the GIMP with Nik's Silver Effects plug-in.
Morning waves at Sandy Beach on Oahu.

For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Matching Things (it’s a stretch, but they are waves hitting the same lava rocks with the same clouds in the sky.)

All photos were taken with my Sony RX10iv. I use Raw Therapee to do the basic adjustments then load the resulting .tif files into the GIMP. I used Nik Silver effects to convert to black and white, then did some touch up and added a vignette using the GIMP.

Black & White, France

Truly a classic: Pont du Gard

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Looking up from the river bed.
Looking down from a viewpoint on a nearby path.

These could have been from anytime in the past two millennia.

The Pont du Gard is so old and classic, in the antiquities classic way, that I couldn’t resist giving a black and white conversion a try. If you’d like to compare, I posted it in color on my other web site: Real golden Arches: Pont du Gard.

I use the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (a.k.a., the GIMP) with the Nik plug in for the conversion. If you are interesting in using the GIMP for black and white I have a post about how to do it: Black and white digital photo processing using the GIMP.

Published for The Weekend in Black and White.

Black & White

The other side of the mountain

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Naches River in Eastern Washington, Even though the river flows through the land is arid and there are few trees.
I always seem to pull over in this spot.
Scenery along the Naches is absolutely gorgeous, whether in color or black and white.
Naches River in Eastern Washington

We took the long way home from The Mountain last week, in order to get some apricots in Eastern Washington. The climate on the far side of the mountain is quite dry and the landscape is stark compared to the lush near rain forests on the western side, but it is beautiful none-the-less.

I think the landscapes have a classic, timeless look in black and white.

These were turned into black and white using the GIMP, open-source software. I used the same methods as I did for the post: Mountain landscapes in black and white.

For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Fields and landscapes.

The color images:

Black & White, Flowers, photo processing

Five petals

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A rock rose.
Columbine

The only fives that caught my eyes this week.

The rock rose was converted to black and white using RawTherapee, an open source program, and the Columbine was processed using the Nik Silver Effects Pro plug-in for the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). I added a vignette and a focus blur in the GIMP.

If you are interested in checking out Raw Therapee or the GIMP there are a few posts here: The photo processing tools on my belt.

For Cee’s Black and White Challenge: Five.

Black & White, photo processing

May in black and white

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For the past year or so I’ve been studying black and white. Specifically using open-source software (the GIMP and Raw Therapee). It is very interesting to see how different elements catch your eye when you remove color.

Here are a few photos from the past few weeks.

Spring woods

True spring green: Sunlight hitting the trees as they start to leaf up.
Fern Cove on Vashon Island in Puget Sound.
Fern Cove's spring woods converted to black and white.
Converted to black and white using the GIMP’s built-in mono-mixer tool.

Do you think it still feels like spring with the color removed?

Siberian Iris

My neighbor’s irises.
Raw Therapee has a tool that allows you to selectively brighten or darken individual colors.
Converted to black and white using Raw Therapee’s luminance equalizer method.
Silver Effects Pro in the Nik collection has a lot of really great pesets. This one is called "Fine Art".
Converted to black and white using the Nik plug-in to the GIMP.

This photo, with two variations shows how you can get different effects. I couldn’t decide which of these two black and whites to choose. In one the flowers stand out more from the background but there isn’t as much emphasis on the design on the petals. What do you think?

Un-furling

This photo is almost a mono-chrome in greens. The contrasts are in brightness and the sharpness of the details.
A bracken fern unfurling.
Another Nik collection preset: Film Noir #3.
Converted to black and white using the Nik plug-in to the GIMP.

I chose this one because it is almost monochrome in green. It’s probably not a fair comparison because the black and white had the background darkened and blurred a bit. Maybe I should go in to the colored one and try to emulate that effect.

Spring Sky

Changing weather viewed over Colvos Passage on Puget Sound.
Simple de-saturation using the GIMP’s built-in tool.

I was curious to see what would happen to this photo that doesn’t seem to have much color in it. It was a surprise to see that the black and white feels a bit warmer than the original.

For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge and Brashley Photography’s Mid-Week Monochrome.

If you are interested in trying out these open source (free!) programs here are a couple of posts that might help: The photo processing tools on my belt.

Snapshots from a Happy Life

Odd couples

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For Cee’s Black and White Challenge: pairs.

My pups: Asta and Ginger are almost inseparable.
Uncle and niece walking Asta make a pretty cute pair.
Dad with my half-sister: Max.
A pair of gulls on a rainy day.

These two were taken in black and white very long ago:

Scanned image from long ago: a boy and his dog.
Another scanned oldy: the same boy (his name was Watson) with his grandfather, also named Watson.

Watson was my grandfather’s oldest brother.