blackandwhite Archives - Page 3 of 7

September 1, 2016September 1, 2016

Brockton Point Lighthouse

This is Brockton Point Lighthouse from inside Stanley Park in Vancouver. The last time I was there I took a walk into the park and ended going a lot further than I planned. That happens a lot when I’m taking pictures. One thing leads to another. This is from a spot that looks across the bay towards the city of North Vancouver which is distinct from Vancouver proper.

Daily Photo

It was the middle of summer so even though it was around nine in the evening it was still light. I love how long the nights are in summer, especially in northern latitudes. Of course it’s just the opposite in winter, long nights and short days.

Canadian gallery

To get here I walked past a collection of totem poles that are on display. Original nations art and artifacts are on display all over Vancouver. There is also a reservation across the bay and as I walked here I could hear the drums of a powwow. I walked over to the lighthouse, around the bend and back to Vancouver. But I made at least a dozen more stops before arriving back at the hotel sometime after midnight. It was just enough time to pack up, grab a quick nap and head to the airport for an early flight back home.

April 25, 2016April 25, 2016

Mr Heron

It was fairly early when I came upon this heron in Sarasota. My plan was to get a sunrise shot over the city from the end of the boardwalk, but at the same time I didn’t want to disturb Mr. Heron, he was there first. I stopped a ways back and contented myself taking his picture. After a few minutes he didn’t move so I decided get closer so I could shoot the other way. As it turns out he let me come right up. As long as I didn’t make any sudden movements and looked the other way he didn’t seem to mind. For me it was a nice standing there in the quite of the morning, doing what I love to do and in the company of Mr Heron.

Turns out he was scanning the water below for a fish that might swim by. Not too far off in the other direction was another heron along the bank next to a tree. It was in that direction I was shooting the sunrise so I tried to incorporate her in the composition as well. But before I left this spot Mr. Bird flew over to other one, …Mrs Bird perhaps?

Check out my Tumblr feed, just passed 1000 posts

I walked down to where they both now stood in the water and took a few more shots, incorporating them both as best I could, not always with success. Again, as long as I didn’t show any signs of aggression they both let me get pretty close. At one point, they even got into a little tussle amongst themselves; most certainly a Mr and Mrs. Nonetheless, they didn’t seem to mind my presence.

Whether or not I got any good shots on this morning, just being here in the presence of Mr and Mrs Heron made the entire excursion worthwhile.

More monochrome images from the gallery

April 12, 2016April 12, 2016

Castle Hallway

The Banff Spring Hotel in Alberta is one of the more amazing places I’ve stayed at. It was built to resemble a Scottish castle as it sits within the majestic landscape of the Canadian Rockies. The inside spares no detail and I spent hours walking the hallways taking pictures of the architecture.

We started in Jasper and drove down the Columbia Ice Fields Parkway which is probably the most scenic highway on the planet. Everything about this area is so beautiful that you gladly forget the world you came from, at least I did. I am glad I took a ton of pictures to remind me of that trip. I’ve been itching to go back ever since.

See more from the Canadian Gallery

This is a tricky image produce. The hallways were basically dark except for the lamps along the way. I ended up combining five different exposures in AuroraHDR Pro to bring out all of the shadows without blowing out the highlights. I then processed in Tonality Pro for monochrome and then back in AuroraHDR for some finishing touches like radiance and glow. I never know how the image will turn out and I ended up doing about three versions, in the end I preferred the monochrome. It seems to be a good balance of all the detailed aspects of thus scene. Now with all that behind me, time to start thinking about a plan to come back here.

More images of interesting architecture from the gallery

April 4, 2016April 4, 2016

Coastal Fog

I took this in British Columbia while returning from a whale watching trip at a group of islands just offshore. Patches of fog started to form in the afternoon as we made our way back to port. The coast of BC can be treacherous and only the most experience sailors have any right to navigate here. There were buoys with bells and fog horns everywhere. The fog renders your eyes useless and so without electronics you must navigate by ear; not for the faint of heart. Even so it makes for ethereal scenery, especially from a boat.

There is an automated lighthouse in Ucluelet not too far from here. Basically the horn begins sounding whenever the fog rolls in. I’m sure it’s reassuring to sailors because from what I saw the fog rolls in pretty fast. I was told the month of August is also known as “Fogust”. Standing safely on shore I could hear the bells of the buoys and the horn of the lighthouse for miles around. When I first arrived the sounds were new and unusual but by the time I left they’d become an integral part of the sights and sounds of these costal communities.

more black and white images from the blog

There are many forms of water in nature but perhaps not so often do we think about it in it’s gaseous state. Yet it can shroud the sky, land and water in a cloak that despite it’s willowy nature, becomes impenetrable to all but the most skilled among us. It was after staying here a week that I gained a whole new respect for sailors and, for that matter, pilots too.

more black and white images from the gallery

March 10, 2016March 10, 2016

Ancient Village

This is the ancient village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert in southern France. Walking the cobblestone streets I was stuck by how old everything was, yet the people living here seemed quite normal. That sounds ignorant of me, but it’s hard to imagine this setting in the modern world, yet here it is and people live their lives here, one foot in today and another in yesterday. A paradox of sorts I suppose.

A selection of other monochrome images in the gallery

For instance some people have satellite dishes and iPhones and MacBookPros. Yet the door to their home could be three-hundred years old. I saw a doctor riding through the streets on a motorcycle making a house call. I saw chickens in a coup, there were children in school on a treasure hunt; all normal things for sure. It’s a product of having been raised in North America, where the entire country is younger than the doorframe to one of these homes.

Maybe our modern cities will look like this in three hundred years from now. Not likely, our homes are not made to last longer than fifty years or so. But this is what happens when you build structures to last, you create a link to the past that people like me can stumble upon and end up wondering about the intermingling of centuries. Your thought for the day.

February 2, 2016February 2, 2016

Late Night in Barcelona

A late night in Barcelona was spent walking around this section of the city filled with restaurants and Tapas bars. This is another from the series that I’ve posted from the area. It was a film noir kind of atmosphere, such that I expected characters from an old movie to walk by at any moment. That never happened.

Black and white is a medium that evokes more from my imagination. Monochrome compared to color is like radio to video. Radio allows my mind to rush in a fill the void resulting in a more vivid experience. It’s counterintuitive, a case of less is more. So it is with black and white photography. My brain knows the world is colorful so it rushes in to fill a similar void and, unknowingly I’ve become engaged with the image.

In this scene I purposely removed some of the detail, I simplified the image. So that, together with the high contrast tones, the black and white image leaves out information for my mind to fill in. What I fill in is different from you, it’s depends on our personality, psyche and predispositions. Same principal as an ink blot, or looking at clouds, we each see something different. For me, this is a mystery and a puzzle all wrapped into an old movie from the forties. For you, something very different than me.

January 29, 2016January 29, 2016

Approaching Howe

A street scene as I was approaching Howe Street on a Saturday night in Vancouver. I’m waking along Robson which is where a lot happens, it’s the nerve center of shopping in Vancity. The rain is never a reason to stay indoors and from what I can tell people ignore it. That’s a good policy and it will serve you well. If you can’t beat it, join it with a raincoat and umbrella.

It was kind of funny actually. I found myself here with these amazing conditions early in the evening and got pretty excited. This is a street photographers dream because of the lights and rain slicked surfaces. I shifted into the zone as I looked for things to unfold all around. At one point I walked up and down this block several times just taking photos.

To get these street scenes at night it takes a very high ISO, especially if I’m shooting without a tripod. I used my Sony A7RII and set the ISO to 10000. That’s a lot of zeros and up until recently, this just a dream and nighttime photography like this was not even possible. Thanks to the advances from Sony new possibilities have opened up for people like me that like shooting in very low light.

Tech talk aside, just getting out with my camera on a raining day, no matter where, is likely to provide a lot of subject matter to explore. Fortunately for me there is no shortage of rain in Vancouver and, I have both a rain coat and an umbrella.

January 27, 2016

Catedral de Barcelona

This is a small section of the front facade of Catedral de Barcelona. I could stand out front of this building and stare at the details for hours. Judging by the other people standing here, some did. I’m easily impressed, which is not to say this isn’t an amazing work of architecture, it’s just that I rarely get a chance to see buildings like this, so when I do I’m usually overwhelmed.

I think that if I see beautiful things often it helps boost my sense of esthetic. That’s true about anything, the more we do the better we get, so on and so on. That’s why I think public art is vital to a city. When it’s always there it strikes a cord, albeit subtle or even unconscious, but vital nonetheless. I just returned from Vancouver where I spent some time downtown. They have a lot of public art on display. I would say the people who see that art have a higher sense of aesthetic whether they realize it or not.

Barcelona has a tonne of public art, everywhere you look. And according to my theory, the residents of that city have a very high aesthetic IQ. That goes for a lot of like minded european cities where art is central. Of course I just stated what any european, and any art lover, already knows; that art is good for us and adds to the vitality of a city. Stating the obvious is just how I roll.

January 16, 2016

Woman Walking the Shore

While in Collioure on my way to Barcelona I noticed this Catalonian woman walking along the shore. Little did I know that the residents of this region consider themselves Catalonian first, then French. Same goes for the Spaniards just south of the boarder. The region they live in crosses the border and is known as Catalonia.

If I can judge the people by the way they live, then they seem to be a solid bunch. When I was in Barcelona I noticed the Catalonian flag hanging from every apartment, literally tens of thousands. Silly me; I thought the flags had something to do with Barcelona FC, which if you don’t know is the most awesome soccer team in the whole universe. But no, not BFC, the flags were in support of Catalonian independence.

I’m just a visitor to the area, I know nothing about the politics, but it quickly became apparent that many are serious about becoming a separate country. That was reinforced by news of votes and such in international headlines about the same time I was here. But it seems for now, Barcelona (Catalonia) is still part of Spain and Collioure is still part of France.

So back to this woman walking the beach. I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I suspect that Catalonian politics was the furthest thing from her mind.

January 7, 2016January 7, 2016

Morning Walk On Carnon Beach

On my last day in France I went for a morning walk on Carnon Beach. Like the beaches in Florida this stretches for miles in each direction. Unlike the beaches in Florida the shore is carved into large semicircles on account of the breakwaters that are built to prevent erosion. You can see them here and if you look at the scene from Google Maps you’ll see what I mean.

In Florida, we have quite a bit of beach erosion from storms each year, at least on the gulf side. In fact the local government repairs the beach every few years. By that I mean that they dredge up the sand from a couple hundred meters off shore and deposit it back on the beach until it erodes again. In France it seems they take a different, less costly approach. The result is mile after mile of these large semicircle beaches. It creates more shore line and perhaps accommodates more people.

Both approaches to maintaining beaches have their pros and cons. However I’m more interested in taking pictures than trying to figure which is better. I spend a lot of time at the beaches in Florida so I have ideas on how to take pictures there. The beaches in Carnon however present new ideas and challenges that I only began to explore. Next time I go back I’ll explore that a little more.