Week Five - 2015 in Photographs

Day 29
Awaiting Serious Snow

This is my fourth year of the 365 Day Photographic challenge and I decided to do one week every so often where I focus on one post processing technique or one subject. This week was black and white. Over the last couple of weeks when I came up with a good photograph to put post process black and white I put them in Week Five folder. My sister is the black and white guru and I need practice. Not just in the post processing but in the selection of subject.

B&W landscapes are best with noisy skies like below or a busy subject and background like above. The front end loader was also a garish yellow in a largely black and white world with the snow and absence of leaves. I didn't go totally to black and white on the machine but reduced saturation to a minimum. I like the memory of color.

Day 30
The Far Hills

B&W is also great with snow and aspens. And in the photograph below the strong shadows.

Day 31
Casting shadows

In the photograph below taken this last fall I wanted the viewer to focus on the details in the onion flower. I did this one also be reducing saturation. Just a hit of green and yellow left.

Day 32
Thinking of Summer

I took the photo below fully intending to make it black and white. I felt when focusing on the dead tree frozen in ice that the far let unfrozen water was not a great color. But as a darker block it did not distract from the branch skeletons.

Day 33
Frozen in

Branches can also make up for the lack of a noisy sky. The sky was a brilliant blue, there was a tiny white cloud at the meeting of the two hills and the stark bare branches. In color the blue stole the show. In B&W the webbing of branches are to focus.

Day 34
Bare Branches of Winter

The color stealing the show is the same in the ice photograph below. Because of the rocks on the bottom the water was an amazing gold but without the detail to sustain the photograph. B&W was the solution and not the objective.

Day 35
Ice on Little Coyote

Next week back to color.