Last week I paid a brief visit to Liverpool. I stayed only one night and saw only a fraction of what the city has to offer. The weather was dull and grey, best suited to monochrome photography.
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People have been using clay and similar materials to shape objects both ornamental and practical for millennia. Today every culture has its ceramics traditions: forms and styles, decorative techniques, purposes. These often sculptural forms lend themselves to monochrome processing.
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It’s a sombre thought that even the most modern and stable of structures may one day become a ruin. Did the builders of the Inca cities, of the Egyptian pyramids or of the temples of Angkor stop to consider that they may not stand for ever?
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It’s hard to say why a symmetrical image is so pleasing to the eye. It seems that our brains are naturally drawn to symmetry, finding it aesthetically pleasing and visually satisfying. Symmetry induces a sense of order, harmony, and perfection.
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Christiane Ritter spent a winter in the harshest conditions that Svalbard can offer. Living in a tiny hut with her husband and another trapper, but sometimes left alone there for many days. Constant darkness, cut off from the world by snow and ice; her Arctic was not my Arctic. But I think editing some of my photos in black and white has helped to emphasise what sense of bleakness I did find in this stunning environment.
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I don’t own a cat and never have; not because I don’t like them but because I like them too much to subject one to the trials of our frequent absences from home. So instead I enjoy meeting cats when out walking in my neighbourhood, or anywhere else come to that! And I don’t believe I can walk past a cat without stopping to say hello and take a photo.
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We’re going on a scavenger hunt through our archives. To be honest that’s what I usually do for many challenges and it’s a great excuse for a rummage that will trigger lots of memories.
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The Arctic is a magical place, wild, bleak, hauntingly beautiful. It is also, surprisingly perhaps, full of colour. However there are plenty of scenes that lend themselves to black and white photography too.
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One of the first things I was told when I first started to take photos as a ten year old was, always have the sun behind you when you shoot. Rubbish! That will of course result in a scene that is evenly lit and easy to capture. But it may also result in a scene that lacks interest.
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There are many ways to learn. We can watch someone else and copy (or try to copy) what they do. We can read instructions and guidelines. We can listen while somebody tells us how to do something. Or we can get stuck in, have a go, and learn from our experiments and efforts.
