Week 8 Black and White 365 Challenge

50 Steep stairs

51 Workshop shelving

52 Fallen toy soldiers

53 Gloves

54 Stairs

55 Wire netting

56 Barbering

Another rainy week so I spent it mostly back in the workshop again. 

The highlight of my week was when my husband and I went in as models for my son in his barbering course. That was a lot of fun. The barbering photo was shot with my cell phone (a Samsung Galaxy J5 Prime) as I didn't take my camera out with me that day. All the rest were shot with my camera as usual.

I'm going to be taking a little break from shooting for a week or two while I have other house related projects going on. There just aren't enough daylight hours in the day at the moment, especially as it's winter here. 

Have a great week :)

Week 7 Black and White 365 Challenge

43 Basket weave

44 Camelia flower

This bush was severely pruned (practically to a stump) by the previous owners of our house. It's started to regrow in the couple of years we've lived here and this year we have been rewarded with

some lovely pale pink flowers.

45 Homegrown Feijoas and some Passionfruit a friend grew.

46 Toolbox.

47 Industrial light fitting

48 Three phase powerpoint

49 Saw blade

This week the weather was cold and rainy and miserable so I spent some time in my husband's workshop looking for inspiration.

Have a great week :)

Week 6 Black and White 365 Challenge

36 Basket weave

37 Buddha eye

38 Thai elephant fabric texture

39 Metal texture

40 Crosstitch texture

41 Dreary weather

42 Fabric texture

This week the weather was lousy but I did get a guy out to quote on replacing our upstairs heatpump and installing a completely new system downstairs. It'll be great to get some proper more economical heating throughout this house.

Have a great week :)

Week 5 Black and White 365 Challenge

29 Budgie

30 Sunny Day

31 My son texting

32 Paint texture

33 Fabric texture

34 Ceramic texture

35 Blurred trees

I'm a few weeks behind in posting these images as I've been a bit busy with the renovations and having a massive declutter so I can't remember what I was thinking when I shot some of these images. Sorry about that.

This week I processed some of my images using  an Instagram filter that made the images a bluish color for a bit of a change.

  

Have a great week :)

Week 3 Black And White 365 Challenge

Day 15 Flaking Paint

This week I decided to explore a few more textures such as the flaking paint above and the textured throw below.

Day 16 Textured Throw

Day 17 Steampunk Hat

 My son wearing a Steampunk hat he created for a fun day at his barbering course. It's made out of a cheap $2 shop hat and old cotton reels and broken swim goggles and other bits and pieces that he spray painted gold to pull it all together.

My son's hat in color.

Day 18 Quan Yin

Day 19 Bits and bobs drawers

Day 20 Our neighbors at night

Day 21 Scratched paintwork

As I post this I'm already four days into the next week and I feel absolutely knackered after spending the last couple of days painting our master bedroom from top to bottom. It looks great now that it's done though, and it was the last bedroom needing to be done so, Yay! That just leaves the big jobs left. The kitchen/lounge/dining and bathroom. Also a lick of paint in the office off the lounge too maybe, but that's a small job compared to the rest and I'm not sure what I want to do in there yet.

Have a great week :)

Week 2 Black And White 365 Challenge

Day 8 Buddha. 

This week I've explored the dark background some more, which I'm really liking the look of and tried a couple of close ups. A macro lens is still top of my personal wishlist for this year but it comes behind house renovations again, unfortunately. 

Day 9 Toy Panda.

My daughter collects little animal toys that are quite realistic looking and have a nice texture.

Day 10 Dahlia Flower

I spotted this beautiful bloom just after the rain had stopped when I was seeing my daughter off to school.

Day 11 Brass Vase

Unfortunately it poured with rain this day so I stayed in and shot a vase in my window.

Day 12 Rain

This day the weather was even worse and I shot this through the bathroom window at 6am when I found the roof gutters overflowing with too much water. Other places in New Zealand had severe flooding so we were lucky that it was only overflowing gutters we had to worry about.

Day 13 Grouchy Face

My daughter was in a funny mood this morning and although we shot happier looking images this day, she decided that this was the one that most suited the day. Monday-itis on a Thursday school day.

Day 14 Rose

I spotted this lovely new bloom in my garden and loved the rain drops on it. 

It rained most of this week and a couple of days it was really heavy which put me off going out with my camera. Although my camera body is rainproof my kit lens unfortunately isn't. The macro lens I yearn for however is, so hopefully once I can get it I'll be more confident about taking my camera out in the rain.

Have a great week :)

Week 1 Black and White 365 Challenge

Day 1 Light Fitting

Welcome to a brand new 365 challenge!

This year I've decided to go more in depth in black and white photography. It's something I've been thinking about doing for a while now as I think it helps you to pay more attention to the light, textures and composition of an image instead of being distracted by the colors. I find today's world can be rather overwhelming with all the gaudy colors on buildings, toys, billboards, cars, even houses all clashing for attention. It's nice to be able to simplify a scene down to it's composition, it's light, patterns and textures too.

I've also decided to embrace the dark side of photography to try to loosen up and shoot more emotionally instead of the more rigid by the book, follow all the rules type shooting I've been finding myself doing recently. By the dark side I mean allowing loads of noise and grain in my images by shooting at extremely high ISOs, by shooting in very low light, by underexposing my images and any other way I can think of to add a bit of grain to my images. I'm also embracing the flaws that I've been taught not to shoot such as, purposely tilting my horizons instead of keeping them level, allowing images that are blurred or a bit out of focus if it creates more feeling or mystery in an image. I've also boosted the contrast in camera and I'm not sharpening my images.

In other words I'm having a year of breaking the rules I've been taught in the past.

I think this year is going to be a lot of fun and a very good learning exercise. For example I've never really shot in black and white before so I've never had to process these types of images. I'd heard of dodging and burning but had never tried it before and so on day five's image I had to search help in photoshop to find out what the tools looked like and where to find them. I'm quite pleased with the resulting image.

Day 2 Feathers

Day 3 Glass Jar

Day 4 Shadows through a leaf

Day 5 My gorgeous daughter and my first attempt with the burn tool

Day 6 A White moth 

Day 7 Early morning drive to work

I hope you'll join me on this learning adventure and maybe even try it for yourself. I think having a project of some kind helps you grow as a photographer and it's certainly a lot of fun. It's also good to have a project to focus on when you don't feel like picking up your camera, it helps to reinvigorate you. Good luck!

Have a great week :)