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Lesson 8 of 12: Shooting in black and white:

Lines and points! It’s so important to watch those lines while composing anything! Those are what lead the eye to and fro to help a viewer enjoy an image. Stray lines can make or break an image, to be honest. 

I initially composed this shot with a lot of white space on the top. When I recomposed, I discovered the dark flower on the bottom forming a nice ‘vertex’ for the stems of the taller three flowers to shoot from. 

I could have perhaps used those leaves in the background just above the the darker flower a little better by moving my camera downwards. Or maybe that would shorten the distance between the dark flower and the middle one by too much. I’m not sure. I’m sure the depth of field is far too much though. I don’t know.

Lesson 7 of 12: Shooting in black and white:

Here’s where I started focusing even more on backgrounds and subjects. I recomposed this shot from the previous lesson and, this time, I only have the one flower as the subject (at least I think I do!)

The centre of the flower is darker than the outside petals. That highlights the tips of the petals that glow white. The outer petals are set on a darker background, particularly towards the right, which helps them stand out. The dark spot to the right above the cobwebs draws attention away from the flower for a bit and then allows your eyes to wander up or down to take in the rest of the image. 

I almost see a bit of a grid going on...I might spend more time looking at this image and do a couple bonus lessons!

Lesson 6 of 12: Shooting in black and white:

Backgrounds!! I have a dark subject in front of a light background. I would not have cared to look and recompose this shot at all had I been shooting in colour. The spider webs are in front of a dark-ish background, but the the dark flower is in front of a light background - to help them both stand out. 

Lesson 5 of 12: Shooting in black and white:

Controlling depth of field is another thing I focused on today. This particular photo of a plant starting to die I initially shot at ƒ1.8. I ended up changing to ƒ3.5 and found it made a great deal of difference to whether or not the viewer can understand what the subject or context/setting even is. Less depth of field can provide a lot of context whereas more can isolate the subject.

Lesson 4 of 12: Shooting in black and white:

This isn’t a particularly good picture, but I ended up learning about bokeh and keeping multiple objects sharp. I recomposed a lot of shots over and over again. I’m not very good at looking at my LCD and telling whether or not my subject(s) are sharp yet...

Lesson 3 of 12: Shooting only in black and white:

I also discovered a thing or two about my 50mm ƒ1.4 by shooting monochrome. I think it’s called ghosting? I can see some of the petals that were slightly out of focus on the top right have a slight glow to them. I don’t really like that...

Lesson 2 of 12: Shooting in black and white:

It’s such a different experience editing these now! Usually, I don’t pay so much attention to tones and how they are affecting my subject. In this picture, I had to burn the darkest regions behind the blurry leaves framing the bud (which weren’t that dark) to force the white of the bud (my subject) forward.