Mini-Challenge #359: Black and White

sarasphotos

Today we can make a conscious choice to convert any photo from color to black and white. Sometimes I find the subject works better without the distraction of color or that the black and white processing enhances the mood of the picture. For this challenge post your three best/favorite black & white shots. Any subject, any time of day.

The challenge will end on Sunday October 22 at 9am Pacific Daylight Time (18:00 for us Europeans).

If you haven't yet participated in the challenges, here are the official/unofficial rules: The Mini-Challenge rules

Here are a few examples:

It would be great to see lots of entries!

Cavalier

OK, I'll start off with my picks - out of many shots since I love BW.

1) Point Arena Lighthouse, California Northern Coast. Not the usual closer shot of the lighthouse, but one that I liked because the coastline becomes the main subject with the punctuation of the lighthouse.

2) Reno Balloon Race. Just because the morning major release of hot air balloons is so colorful, I liked the serenity of this one in BW.

3) Redding Kool April Nites Cruise evening My favorite "Yea, we cool" panning shot.

And not for mini, but had to show other "Yea, we cool" in same cruise. Because I was positioned in the middle of 4 lanes of beauties, I failed to get the whole car in these - gotta be faster than i was at panning!

sarasphotos

Hey Jo, @Cavalier thanks for kicking things off in fine style!

grandmaR

Back in the 80s I was developing and printing my own pictures. I worked only in black and white. So these are not conversions. This is my daughter riding 3 different horse/ponies in the three phases of eventing

1. Dressage pony
   

2. Beginner cross country
   

3. Preliminary Level Stadium
   

I rarely do black and white conversions. Mostly only when there is a color flaw in the print or slide which will be hard to edit out. This is an example - a slide I took of my dad at my sister's wedding where the slide got colored by something.

sarasphotos

@grandmaR how nice to see your "real" b+w entries. I, too remember the days where one had to consciously choose film types. I'm envious of your ability to develop and print your own!

sapphire73

Great topic for a mini with open-ended subject! I'm enjoying seeing what others post and will start looking for some photos to share.

sapphire73

Here are a few black and white images of mine.

1) Mountain Goats near Breckenridge, Colorado

2) Part of the Waal Bridge in Nijmegen, Germany

3) Street Scene in Speyer, Germany

Not an entry but one of my favorite black and white images, partly because I was delighted to be able to capture it from a hotel window, shooting over chimneys and roof tops. I didn't have a tripod with me because we were embarking on a river cruise, but I managed to steady the camera with the help of a gorillapod.

slpollett

Fun theme! I rarely do black and white conversions, so I'm going to have to hunt some down. I won't have time until very close to the deadline, so hope I make it!

Edited to add:

Found some!
1. Dad's Boots

2. Patio After Snowfall - This was my patio during the beginning of Snowmageddon in Texas in Feb 2021. This was very atypical for us in Texas. We usually don't get snow at all except maybe once every 5 years or so. even then we might get an inch and it doesn't hang around long. This time, we ended up with close to a foot and we had it almost 2 full weeks.
   

3. Watch for Incoming Snowball! This is from a previous snowball, which was basically a more typical for what we usually get--an inch or so that's fun to play in for a few minutes and then it's gone by the afternoon.
   

Sherry P.

sarasphotos

@sapphire73 Gretchen, thanks for the great entries!

@slpollett Sherry - I hope you have time before the deadline. Would love to see entries from you!

kdotaylor

1. 
2. 

3. 

   It's been a really long time since I visited....So nice to see all your images!

bfluegie

1. Skitz putting up with my off-camera flash practice
   

2. Yosemite Creek below the falls
   

3. Just before sunset, Yaki Point, Grand Canyon
   

sarasphotos

@kdotaylor Great images! Thanks for joining in.
@bfluegie another great set!

How fun, the decision making is going to be tough!

sarasphotos

Hey folks, only opne more day left in this Mini - I'd love to see another entry or two!

slpollett

@bfluegie Barbara, love your kitty!
@kdotaylor Kate, I love your first two so much. The ripples in the tree reflection are mesmerizing.

I'm glad I'm not judging this one!!

Sherry

sarasphotos

The challenge has officially ended. I'll post results tomorrow. Wish me luck - the decision making will be tough!

grandmaR

@sarasphotos said:
@grandmaR how nice to see your "real" b+w entries. I, too remember the days where one had to consciously choose film types. I'm envious of your ability to develop and print your own!

Thank you for being so gracious about my failure to follow the directions. I was taking a class where we bought bulk film, loaded our own cassettes and then developed and printed the pictures. We learned how to 'dodge and burn' to correct and change exposure problems. Dodging was giving less exposure time to underexposed parts of the photo and burning was added time to overexposed parts to make them darker. When you do this, each print will be different.

In this photo my daughter's face was overexposed, so I gave it more processing time.

I am sure that you remember that darkroom lights in the b&w days were red because black and white film did not respond to red light. I did sometimes print color negatives in black and white. But I always had to add extra time to the red portions of the negative. I would do similar when I was sending film that had been taken underwater when snorkeling or diving. The water filters out the red end of the spectrum so I always told the processor to 'push' the yellow-red end of the spectrum.

I am not sure if this applies to making black and white photos out of digital print, but I usually increase the contrast and make the picture darker when I change a digital color copy to black and white