An occasional Photo Blog
I’ve had a film in my Yashica T5 for about a year now, and yesterday I actually got round to finishing it. As the excitement mounts whilst waiting for the film to be processed, I thought I’d put myself in a sort of b&w mood by rummaging through my 2016 pictures, and selecting a few b&w images which I posted on the 365 project during last year.
After much consideration I decided to join the so called 365project last Friday, 29th January. (My page is here)
It was by no means an easy decision. Vic’s blog enables me to post when I feel like it, and on a good day I can include several images if the mood takes me. The 365project has a completely different philosophy and motivates to post one picture every day for a year! Quite a task really, but today I posted my 6th image and am feeling quite proud of myself. Obviously not every Photo will be a masterpiece, in fact I very much doubt whether any of mine will be, but that’s not the point! The point is simply taking pictures, enjoying them and sharing them with others!
Carrying the dslr around for a whole year would perhaps not be very practical, but I’m beginning to rediscovered the LX2, and of course the mobile phone is worth it’s weight in gold! You can view my project here
Here are a couple of Photographs taken on Day 2 – but of course I only posted one on 365project 🙂
Quite some time ago I read on the “365 project” a remark that got me thinking about the phenomena Black and White.
Rob Wells took a really interesting photograph of a tree that had obviously seen better days. (http://365project.org/robewells/365/2011-08-13)
It’s clearly a monochrome image and it seems that he was somewhat uneasy about taking a Black&White shot in the summer. I Quote: “…..although I’m not very happy doing b&w in the summer.”
To be honest I usually take colour photos, I actually like colour: The youthful greens of spring, the warm summer hues and the beautiful autumn golds, to say nothing of the somewhat reserved colours of winter. But once in a blue moon I load a B&W film in an old camera to produce something a bit different, just for the fun of it.
Thumbing through various photo magazines I’m often quite surprised at how many photographers still use Black and White to achieve something a bit special.
Could this be akin to the desire to travel in an old railway carriage being pulled by a steam engine, or the primeval urge to light a wood fire in winter instead of just turning on the central heating?
An inexplicable yearning for all things old perhaps? Is there really a truly ‘superior’ artistic quality to B&W pictures that my somewhat limited artistic talent hasn’t quite grasped (yet)?
Anyway, let me return to the start of all this. The “…not very happy doing b&w in the summer” line certainly caught my attention and seemed to challenge me to do just that; take monochrome pictures in the summer.
I had to show myself that B&W pics can be taken without appearing errr, colourless. It’s very doubtful whether I achieved anything other than a few greyish looking photos, but it was great fun experimenting and I don’t think I’ve finished with B&W just yet.
Incidentally, It was very interesting to note that although the fruits of my labours may tell a different story, I was very motivated during the summer months and I actually had my camera with me quite often, thus proving how important it is to photograph with some sort of purpose, however trivial!
Feel free to take a look at all my ‘summery’ monochrome pics at:
http://www.harding.ch/Gallery21/main.php?g2_itemId=873
For the technically interested, the photos in the gallery were almost all original B&W pics, but a few were desaturated with Gimp. A mixture of Panasonic DMC-LX2, Sony-Ericsson W995 mobile phone and Samsung ES30 was used.