Why, when we see the world in colour, do we often find black and white portraits so engaging? With the distraction of colours stripped away we are driven to focus on elements such as the direction of a gaze, skin texture and the interplay of light and shadow on the face. Elements such as clothing and jewellery fade into the background and the expression on the face takes centre stage.
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It’s probably many years since any of us used Kodachrome to capture ‘nice bright colours’. But digital photography allows us to achieve similarly cheerful results. It also, of course, allows us to opt for a purely greyscale monochrome palette.
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Is there anyone who isn’t awed by a waterfall? Whether it’s the sheer power of the water tumbling over the edge a one of the world’s great falls such as Victoria or Iguazu, or whether it’s the delicate lace and spray of a stream tumbling over rocks, the movement and sound seem always to hold us in their grip.
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Hull has had something of a poor reputation in England in recent years, but that seems to be changing. A city voted the ‘worst place to live in the UK’ in 2005 became the country’s City of Culture in 2017 and last year its city centre was named one of the coolest places to live by the Sunday Times. From worst to coolest; that’s quite a turnaround!
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Sri Lanka is such a colourful country that it seems counterintuitive to photograph it in black and white. But I’m always up for a photographic challenge! Plus, I enjoy editing from colour into monochrome, experimenting to see what different effects and moods I can create.
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I’ve never been particularly good at sports, and I’m too competitive to enjoy the feeling of losing … or even coming second! But I do like to watch others excel at them. It’s exciting not to know what will happen next, and to cheer on a favourite individual or team to success.
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Today I am focusing on just one letter, P. Why P, you ask? I had no Particular Purpose in choosing it for this week’s Monochrome Madness challenge to be honest. I Possibly Perceived it as a fairly challenging letter to express through a Photographic Process.
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Everything captured within our photos should be there for a reason. What we leave out is as important as what we include, but we also need to be sure that our subject is clear and that our photo says something about that subject.
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I hope these images of animate and inanimate subjects found on rooftops around the world, from cats to crosses, demonstrate that it is always worth looking up while carrying a camera. You never know what you might see!
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We all know the colours of the rainbow and our imaginations can supply them even when photographed in black and white. The colours of many other photographic subjects are equally recognisable too. But when we strip out those colours and leave our imagination to fill them in, other elements of the subject, like texture and form, come to the fore.
