20: 2-May-2016

Finally, my reads of the week – the bit of my missives you all wait for!

This time, I’ve taken inspiration from the world of black and white which we briefly explored at the peer review at the last meeting. I felt my fire station shot looked better de-saturated and in fact fiddling around with it in B&W with more contrast made it better (I thought).

So to get the ball rolling – 60 inspiring B&W images from the Photo Argus along with a few tips on how to get there.There will be at least one there that gets you inspired – I rather liked this one by Thomas Lieser:

And this one by Elena K (this has so much happening in such a simple image!)

and this one by Bahadır Bermek

Which ones did you like?

Now that last one is a great example of a silhouette – and another article in Photo Argus illustrates more like it – with 29 examples and plenty of web links. The take home message – it does not have to be B&W – colour works too.

But there is more to B&W than that – think about what you are photographing. Think about separation of the elements, think about the texture, think about the light & contrast.That’s what Robin Whaley at ePhotozine suggests – read the tips! There are plenty more to read and importantly see – like Mark Goldstein’s short article in Photography Blog or Dan Richard’s interview with 3 photographers in Pop Photo.

Finally, on the B&W exploration trail, Digital Camera World has a few tips on doing the conversion in Photoshop.

Ok – now for something you may not get the chance to shoot that is truly eerie – a desert ghost town in the Namibian Desert – taken by Melbourne photographer Emma McEvoy. Not B&W, but it would work just as well.I first saw parts of this in Griff Rhys-Jones documentary on TV, but this is so much more powerful. I’m inspired – anyone got an empty decaying house for me to play in?