B&W B&W: Words/No Words

2023-02-25 (Sat) 19-46-45.jpeg
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So I test drive the suggestion I got from a video made by Matti Sulanto, to shoot B&W-only images for a month. I put my Sony a7 Mark IV in B&W Picture Style and changed from RAW only to JPEG & RAW. To my, positive, surprise upon import of the RAW files Lightroom automatically set the pictures to B&W so I don't have to shoot JPEGs at all, I can keep the RAW files as they were shot and rever to colour if I ever want to (I rarely go back to change RAW files, to be honest). Here's the few pictures I made last night on my way home from work:

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I've shot this church so many times that I ignore it most of the time. Shooting it in B&W has an extra appeal to me now.

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Seeing the image in the EVF in B&W certainly helps a lot to think of an image in B&W (since the only B&W photography in my life has been family pictures until I reached age 6).

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I am happy to say that when I look at these images I only see them as they were made, in B&W, and I have not been tempted at all to check the coloured version. I love that and I can't wait to do some more, it certainly simplified photography for me in a way.

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Editing the RAW files has a certain aspect that I need to rethink. I think I need to keep the shadows darker than I usually pull them up. And the highlights have been a bit more challenging to "see" them where I would like them to be. The extra sharpness and clarity actually give the B&W image an even more appeal to me than before. It will take some time to get a method for editing these kinds of images, a different approach to coloured images.


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Even the most mundane items are starting to have an appeal when shooting without colours ... it's starting to give me a certain freedom to make images when I live in such a small town and limited access.

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I have wondered if I could find a place for B&W images in wildlife photography since I revolved most of my interests there, the one thing that might make it difficult to shoot a whole month only in B&W. I normally convert images to B&W if the ISO and noise are ridiculously high or I messed up the exposure of the highlights or shadows too much to recover them.

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It's quite a lot of fun and it makes the dependency on the weather (like the typical grey dull light) for good images less of a pressure and moral/mood boost to shoot B&W ... dare I say therapeutic?

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This reminds me of my early 90s childhood, playing in the park and my mom snapping pictures of me on a cheap 35mm film camera.

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I just loved the bent gate left open and the cat staring at me from "above" it, I had to approach slowly to make sure the cat won't run away, trying to get a wide angle to include the gate and the cat in relative proportions to each other.

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"I am growing tire-d of this." :p
 
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