The other day I picked up a copy of The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images by Angela Faris Belt. Now, my stuffed-to-the-gills bookshelves hardly needed another book (especially another one on composition) but I really liked the way she had exercises at the end of each chapter. I made time yesterday to tackle some of that homework and had a lot of fun with this particular one.
The assignment was to set your camera to the closest focal length while also opening the apeture to its widest setting. I used my 50 f1.8 and took to my backyard.
I was very happy with this one — especially after I added the blue color overlay. Here is its partner:
But then, as I was running my mouse over the presets panel in Lightroom, I saw what a certain black and white film preset did to the image and I was so wonderfully surprised and thrilled! You know that serendipitous moment when it just clicks. : )
and here:
It was hard to give up the lovely blues and greens — I do love color — but the effect in black and white is just phenomenal, I think. It’s so moody and soft and ghostly. I think there is a lot more emotion in the black and white.
I’m very happy with how this exercise turned out and I think I may turn to this technique again and again.