Was in a B&W mood today

miketaylor01

Weather and light was crappy today so I decided to shoot at ISO 200 and get some noise into my shots which I could convert later back into a grain effect. I think they turned out ok. Let me know what you think..

Storms Coming


Boots


Boots and Ladder

ginger_55

I like them Mike. Is that good enough? I had a whole photo thing planned today. Ended up going to Staples, talking about how to fix printers, driver problems, etc. So came home and finally, for 2 photos anyway, I got the printer fixed.

I do like your shots, I am in a blk and white mood, too. How do you shoot differently when you are in a blk and white mood?

g

miketaylor01

You know what... Im not quite totally sure. I just kinda do it. I mean I think I look for things im going to shoot a little differently if I totally dont care about the colors and am looking for good high contrast scenes. Also, as im sure some people on here would say the SD9 is not a good low light camera. They may be right in that there is alot of noise introduced into a shot about ISO 200. The SD9 only goes up to 400. Now I have heard the SD10 is alot better in low light situations and has 800 and 1600. i wouldnt know for sure though as I have never shot with it.

Anyways.. Today I shot for B&W by shooting at 200 even though I didnt have to because I knew my camera would start to introduce a little bit of noise in the sketchy light due to the weather today. This is actually preferred to me since I like grain in some of my B&W and that was what I was trying to do. Now the noise produced by the camera isnt the most attractive thing in the image unless you mess around with it a little bit in post processing. So I use a program called neatimage. Mostly its used for smoothing out noise in skys.. Kinda smooths them out. I also noticed though that it creates a grain like effect in a B&W image that has a little bit of noise present.

Ok that was a little bit long winded. I guess the short answer is I think I shoot different compositionally when I know I will be using the image for only B&W. Other people may not be that way, but I prefer high contrast B&W and grain in some cases. I just really didnt have any hope of getting good color shots without a tripod today (its in the mail):D

cowgirl21

Good Shots! I like them all, but i like the last one best. So what's it like over in Iraq? Is it okay to ask that:??Just wondering.

miketaylor01

Thanks Amber.. Its alright for you to ask what Iraq is like. I wish I had the ability to take pictures of more of the country than I do now. Unfortunately im not flying in the job im in right now so ive been stuck on the same base in tikrit here for about 2 months now. If your really curious to see what more of the country looks like check out my smugmug page. http://miketaylor01.smugmug.com

Almost all of the pictures in the photography category have been taken since I bought my Sigma SD9 about a month ago. The others category contains all of the picture I have that I took before I got the sigma when I was flying pretty much every day. The pictures are pretty much all snapshots, but they were taken all over Iraq and might give you a better idea of what it looks like over a wider part of the country.

Back to your original question. How is Iraq? Well... it sucks. Ive been here since feb 8th and dont have a clue when we will be going home. Home for me is Ansbach Germany right now. Im in a UH-60 Blackhawk company that is stationed there. Now when I say it sucks here that is mainly due to the fac tthat I am here in the first place. Also, it sucks to be doing a job when all the media does is portray the bad part of whats going on here. There is ALOT of very good things that we are doing here that never hit the news anywhere. Its hard to keep your head up when what you are seeing every day is so much different from what the rest of the world sees. Ok, im gonna stop that line of thought right now cause I have very strong feeling about it and I could go on and on all night and probably piss some people here off. So let me just say that relatively it is not bad here. We are living comfortably and things could be alot worse. Liek they could be as bad as the media makes it out to be but thats not the truth so things really arent bad. Just doing our jobs looking forward to coming home.

I really dont mind talking about this but I get the feeling that alot of people here are hesitant to even bring it up. Doesnt bother me. I am just trying to portray what I am seeing through my photographs and maybe give some people an insight to this country and the war that might not be possible otherwise. Im having alot of fun doing it and learning at the same time. So I really hope everyone is enjoying what I am sharing. Even though I hate the job im doing now at the same time my being able to be on the internet the amount that I am and the time to go out and shoot would not be possible. So even though a situation may seem bad at first I have learned that very good things can come out of seemingly bad situations as has happened to me over the last two months.

If anyone ever has a question please ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.. There are some things that I cant talk about, but I will let you know if thats the case. Thanks everyone for the feedback I have gotten so far. Its been great.

cowgirl21

Well, I'll just tell you, thank you for your service there. Everyone is much appreciated for the job you all do. Yes, What I see or hear on the news everyday is all negative. So it's good to know that things are going better than it's portrayed. I'm actually surprised that your allowed to talk about Iraq at all. I'm a little nervous about the elections coming up and hoping nothing crazy happens. I definitely won't get into politics though. We don't want to start any fights. :nono
So are the people there thankful that we are there, or do they want us to leave them alone? (if you can answer that, if not I totally understand.) Just curious to hear things from the horse's mouth and not the media/politicians.
Thanks for the insight! Keep up the great work!

miketaylor01 wrote:

Thanks Amber.. Its alright for you to ask what Iraq is like. I wish I had the ability to take pictures of more of the country than I do now. Unfortunately im not flying in the job im in right now so ive been stuck on the same base in tikrit here for about 2 months now. If your really curious to see what more of the country looks like check out my smugmug page. http://miketaylor01.smugmug.com

Almost all of the pictures in the photography category have been taken since I bought my Sigma SD9 about a month ago. The others category contains all of the picture I have that I took before I got the sigma when I was flying pretty much every day. The pictures are pretty much all snapshots, but they were taken all over Iraq and might give you a better idea of what it looks like over a wider part of the country.

Back to your original question. How is Iraq? Well... it sucks. Ive been here since feb 8th and dont have a clue when we will be going home. Home for me is Ansbach Germany right now. Im in a UH-60 Blackhawk company that is stationed there. Now when I say it sucks here that is mainly due to the fac tthat I am here in the first place. Also, it sucks to be doing a job when all the media does is portray the bad part of whats going on here. There is ALOT of very good things that we are doing here that never hit the news anywhere. Its hard to keep your head up when what you are seeing every day is so much different from what the rest of the world sees. Ok, im gonna stop that line of thought right now cause I have very strong feeling about it and I could go on and on all night and probably piss some people here off. So let me just say that relatively it is not bad here. We are living comfortably and things could be alot worse. Liek they could be as bad as the media makes it out to be but thats not the truth so things really arent bad. Just doing our jobs looking forward to coming home.

I really dont mind talking about this but I get the feeling that alot of people here are hesitant to even bring it up. Doesnt bother me. I am just trying to portray what I am seeing through my photographs and maybe give some people an insight to this country and the war that might not be possible otherwise. Im having alot of fun doing it and learning at the same time. So I really hope everyone is enjoying what I am sharing. Even though I hate the job im doing now at the same time my being able to be on the internet the amount that I am and the time to go out and shoot would not be possible. So even though a situation may seem bad at first I have learned that very good things can come out of seemingly bad situations as has happened to me over the last two months.

If anyone ever has a question please ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.. There are some things that I cant talk about, but I will let you know if thats the case. Thanks everyone for the feedback I have gotten so far. Its been great.

wxwax

Mike, I really like the first two. In the first, the house is sharp, really stands out. And in the second, it's a powerful, clean, uncluttered image. Nice work, some of the best you've posted here, IMHO. Terrific B&W exposures. Love the contrast and range.