Usually my photo-expeditions take place around sunrise, as I adore the early-morning light. This time however I decided to go to Scheveningen (located at the sea) in the afternoon. There was a forecast for some very strong wind, which would be even stronger in the afternoon, and I hoped for some nice waves. I even hoped for some dramatic clouds to create a real stormy image, but all clouds were blown away apparently. What resulted was some wonderful light that I would normally not encounter. And of course some strong winds…
Somehow during editing and processing of the images a couple of them ended up in black and white. For some reason this light gave the images a kind of retro feel, and the black and white enhances that. But there were some nice colours too, so I ended up with a mixture of both.
You may have noticed that I changed the blog’s format a bit. Instead of putting lens and exposure data in the captions I added some text. It is a little experiment, I still have to make my mind up what I like better. Maybe it just depends on the subject and the set of photos.
Thanks for reading!
Hi Aukje, it’s impressive how “widescreen” some of these look, with a 35mm lens. I thought at first looking at the shots it would be 28mm, maybe even wider.
I’m curious how you decided which to edit/process as black and white?
I know when I shoot film, my mindset is quite different with a b/w film loaded in my camera, compared with a colour film. I translate this to digital too – if I want to shoot b/w I still shoot RAW colour on the camera, but with the intention to convert every image to b/w afterwards, so I have that same mindset when I’m shooting – looking for the compositions that I think will best suit b/w rather than colour. I find it confusing to shoot digital and be trying to think about switching between colour and b/w compositions!
Dan
Hi Dan, I am surprised too. Specifically the top one, I still look at it and can hardly believe I took that one. I didn’t know what made it look different, now I think you are right that it looks wider. I think it has to do with the people between the pillars actually being farther away, messing with perspective?
With respect to the black and white, I am afraid that I don’t have a trained eye like you have so I can change my mindset. I mainly shoot colour, and see in colours. But sometime when I look at the files I feel that there is more potential than what I have there, and sometimes that potential can be delivered by converting to b&w, if that makes sense. Mainly I look at what I want to focus on in the image, and see how that part comes across best, in colour or b&w. Which doesn’t mean that I convert everything, most of the time colour works for me and I don’t feel the need to explore the monochrome version. In this case there were a couple of photos where I specifically liked the lines or textures and I thought they were more present in black and white. For example with the footsteps, there was a strong wind creating flows of sand that I wanted to capture, but in colour it was barely visible (more so than in the current b&w version).
One day I hope to have the experience and training to be able to envision the result before I take a photo. Then I can also improve my film black&white results, because they can be a bit of hit and miss because I have difficulty seeing the world in black and white.
I agree about the distant people in the top shot, it does help to make the photograph seem very cinematic and all encompassing. It reminds me of some shots I took down by the sea in Brighton (there’s a similar pier) with a very wide compact, the 22mm Superheadz Black Slim Devil (one of the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim clones).
Re the black and white, I realised a few years back that with the limited time I have to spend on photography, I want to maximise my time “out in the field”. I used to scan my own film, and for a while used to play with film presets in LightRoom to try to make digital photographs look (more) like film ones. Then I realised that the amount of time I was spending on these computer based activities were far from what I wanted to prioritise on, or why I started photography. So I went back to just having my film scanned by the lab and accepting the (pretty decent) results. And I greatly cut down the LightRoom time. With the time saved I simply went out and shot more film.
Anyway, the point being, by deciding whether to shoot colour or b/w (film or digital) before I go out, then I just get on with it, knowing the end results will be as already pre-chosen, either colour or b/w. It’s very liberating to know that the moment you press the shutter button it’s pretty much the last time you will have any input into that particular shot, and there won’t be subsequent minutes/hours/days spent editing and tweaking the image.
This is just my approach of course. My love of photography is probably 40% the adventure of capturing beautiful things, 40% using beautiful vintage cameras and only 20% the final image.
Thanks Dan, that makes sense. I am going to think about that for a while. The main reason to start photography for me was going out of the house more. I have to keep that in mind!
Yes, that was how photography evolved for me too really. I’ve always liked wandering around the countryside, across fields and through woodlands, along coastlines, and around old churchyards… Then I guess I started using my phone to take pictures as I had it with me anyway, then it evolved into a more sophisticated digital compact, then film. I took some very appealing (to me) photographs with the first two or three 3 and 5MP Sony Cybershot cameraphones I had, and they had zero processing. A useful reminder to me when I start to spend too much time on a computer tweaking photos!