Day 1 - Five (Monochrome Shots) in Five (Days)

[Mike Farley]

OK, my initial entry to this cornucopia of monochrome.

Taken in my local woods, which looked stunning in the autumn colours, so in a way it is a pity to convert to monochrome.

[Ronald Barker]

[attachment=0]IMG_0108-Edit CCC.jpg[/attachm


Man without a face

Taken on a trip to Tower of London, taking the grandchildren to see the poppies.

Not shore I will be able to take a picture a day but will try.

[Mike Farley]

Not shore I will be able to take a picture a day but will try.

Glad to have you on board, Ron. Good luck with the project.

[Mike Farley]

Technical details for my shot.

Olympus OM-D E-M10
Sigma 60 mm f/2.8 DN (120 mm equivalent for 35 mm)
1/125 sec
f/5.6
ISO 3200

It was a very dull day, especially for photography in the woods, but ISO 3200 on the E-M10 still gives reasonable results when using Lightroom's noise reduction.

This is the straight Raw conversion with not adjustments applied. As I said in my earlier post, it was a pity to discard the autumn colourrs.

Original image as shot.

Trees As Shot.jpg (127.82 KiB) Viewed 4154 times

And this is how it looked after processing in Lightroom.

Image after processing in Lightroom.

Trees Post Lightroom.jpg (116.96 KiB) Viewed 4154 times

Mono conversion done in SEP2, using a modified custom preset.

[Mata]

Had a long day around Brick Lane. The weather was so-so. Cloudy with rain.

I was expecting it to be busy but not to the extent it was. As soon as I pointed the camera there was someone moving across the view.

I did find plenty of street art in the side streets/alleyways.

I will put a few in a different thread.

The shot below is one I came across by accident. I got lost and was trying to find my way back to Brick Lane.

Technically it is black and white – I think....

[Mike Farley]

OK, here is my Day 1 contribution. LIke David I had planned a studio shoot. However, in my case the studio is my back room and my model is my wife who gave up 10 whole minutes to help me out!!

I was trying for a moody 1920s look but with limited time and a 1 year old about to wake from his sleep my time was very limited. I setup the strobe in advance and wrapped some black felt around the head to limit its spread. My wife wore her hat, scarf and coat and held a reflector with her right hand. The hat was angled further down to mask the eyes and just go with a smile instead. In post-processing I brought down the background to pure black and added some dodging and burning to give more contrast. Shot at 1/200s @ F11 ISO 400 with flash on 1/16 power from around 5 feet away.

IMG_4136as.jpg

Thanks, Paul, and to your wife for posing. Nice sense of mystery not showing the whole face.

[Mike Farley]

The shot below is one I came across by accident. I got lost and was trying to find my way back to Brick Lane.

Technically it is black and white – I think....

Thanks, Jay. Not that it matters too much for the purposes of this exercise, but the club's definition of monochrome is the one which is generally accepted.

"Monochrome means traditional "Black and White", as well as meaning a single colour, such as Sepia. If there is even a slight hint of an additional colour, the image is not regarded as being monochrome. e.g. a "Black and White" image with a single traffic light displaying green."

With monochrome, shape and texture gain greater importance and contrast can often be boosted beyond what would normally be acceptable in colour. Exponents frequently like to have a full range of tones in their images from black through to white, rather than tones which consist only of mid greys. The latter is not something which applies in this instance, but where it occurs the resulting photo can be insipid. It would be interesting to see what your shot looks like with all the colour removed. Hope this helps.

[Mike Farley]

I ended up with a choice of two shots to post today and this is the alternative. My wife did not like having so much of the image being out of focus and as this can be an acquired taste, I played safe for my final selection. I had a second version where the central tree was better placed to the left, but that was not quite sharp. I cropped this to adjust the composition to move the tree as far to the left as I could.

Olympus OM-D E-M10
Sigma 60 mm f/2.8 DN (120 mm equivalent for 35 mm)
1/125 sec
f/2.8
ISO 1250

[davidc]

Very interesting to wake up and see today's results, good work all
Also great to see Ron coming out of nowhere with a contribution too, keep it up!

[Peter Boughton]

Well Sunday was a failure for me.

I woke up later than planned, and was greeted with a completely flat grey sky, so that limited options - plus I needed to do shopping before closing time so decided I best find something around town.

I was thinking I might be able to use the technique of getting directional light / contrast via an overhang, but didn't find anything inspiring. I also considered Surrey Street Market - the stalls have bright lamps in the late afternoon which might provide interesting lighting, but - well, you'd think after ten years in Croydon I'd know Sunday is the one day of the week it doesn't run. :/

So yeah, didn't take a single shot all day. Oh well.


Monday was a better day. Still mostly cloudy, but better light and some brief fragments of sunshine, so I actually took photos, and I'll go add my selection to the other thread.