BWProject26

Autumn Stand in Black and White

Posted by Ellie
 

Week 22/26: Landscape

When I was about 10 or 11 we had a cheap little film camera. I don't remember being given it, so it probably was shared by the family. I have early pictures I took with that camera, none of them very earth shattering, mostly pictures of family members. However my earliest memories of my photography was when I was standing with my camera in front of a wonderful landscape. I remember more than once thinking how beautiful the scene was and taking two or three photos. Weeks (months?) later when the film went in to be developed, the black and white pictures came back. I remember looking at them and wondering why I had taken them. Somehow that breathtaking landscape of rolling tree covered hills had turned into a dull scene, totally lacking interest.

No one ever explained to me how to choose and frame a subject (landscape or otherwise) that would look good in black and white. No one told me that simple clean lines look great A landscape of stark tree trunks and branches against snow or fog would look wonderful in black and white, no colour needed at all (no fussy leaf masses) as do dramatic skies behind a subject, that no matter how striking the colour of the leaves you see before you, that colour will have little impact in the printed image. No one told me any of those things and we certainly couldn't have afforded colour film at that time. Neither did I have access to a darkroom, to the tools that would have allowed for creativity, such as dodging and burning, to bring out dramatic skies and highlight subjects. So every time the prints came back, I was bitterly disappointed.

This challenge then immediately brought back those memories, but spurred me on to try to find a subject where colour was secondary to the composition. At this time of year, with brilliant foliage everywhere and as I could't get to a seashore (my first choice) I found this proud stand of trees in the field behind our house, in front of gathering evening clouds. In the foreground is a potential monarch butterfly nursery* for next year, seed heads of the common milkweed plants.

*As an aside, the invasive common milkweed is not the best plant for the butterflies, they much prefer the non invasive marsh milkweed, which I am planting next year.

My posts are all on my blog: https://www.elliekennard.ca.

#BWProject26 | Curated by +Tisha Montgomery +Brandon Luk +Lauri Novak +Al Chris

1205

Check this out on Google+

Autumn Stand in Black and White

Posted by Ellie
 

Week 22/26: Landscape

When I was about 10 or 11 we had a cheap little film camera. I don't remember being given it, so it probably was shared by the family. I have early pictures I took with that camera, none of them very earth shattering, mostly pictures of family members. However my earliest memories of my photography was when I was standing with my camera in front of a wonderful landscape. I remember more than once thinking how beautiful the scene was and taking two or three photos. Weeks (months?) later when the film went in to be developed, the black and white pictures came back. I remember looking at them and wondering why I had taken them. Somehow that breathtaking landscape of rolling tree covered hills had turned into a dull scene, totally lacking interest.

No one ever explained to me how to choose and frame a subject (landscape or otherwise) that would look good in black and white. No one told me that simple clean lines look great A landscape of stark tree trunks and branches against snow or fog would look wonderful in black and white, no colour needed at all (no fussy leaf masses) as do dramatic skies behind a subject, that no matter how striking the colour of the leaves you see before you, that colour will have little impact in the printed image. No one told me any of those things and we certainly couldn't have afforded colour film at that time. Neither did I have access to a darkroom, to the tools that would have allowed for creativity, such as dodging and burning, to bring out dramatic skies and highlight subjects. So every time the prints came back, I was bitterly disappointed.

This challenge then immediately brought back those memories, but spurred me on to try to find a subject where colour was secondary to the composition. At this time of year, with brilliant foliage everywhere and as I could't get to a seashore (my first choice) I found this proud stand of trees in the field behind our house, in front of gathering evening clouds. In the foreground is a potential monarch butterfly nursery* for next year, seed heads of the common milkweed plants.

*As an aside, the invasive common milkweed is not the best plant for the butterflies, they much prefer the non invasive marsh milkweed, which I am planting next year.

My posts are all on my blog: https://www.elliekennard.ca.

#BWProject26 | Curated by +Tisha Montgomery +Brandon Luk +Lauri Novak +Al Chris

1205

Check this out on Google+

Decay : In Black and White

Posted by Ellie
 

Week 21/26

Decay is everywhere around us and it should be so easy to get something that illustrates it, as this week's theme demands. I discovered that the trick lies not in finding something decaying, but in finding something that really shows that decay without the added dimension of colour. What makes this so challenging is that our eyes 'see' in colour and one of the most beautiful aspects of decay is the wonderful tones and shades in something in the last throes of life! So a dying bunch of blue hydrangeas, beautiful in pale blues, oranges and yellows all crinkled and crisp, looks wonderful. As soon as you convert the image to black and white you can barely even tell that the flowers are decaying at all. A wonderful old fungus on a tree is full of rich browns, yellows and creams and is fascinating to look at. But it is really dull in black and white.

At last, having photographed many different decaying things including the above mentioned, I end up posting the most obvious subject for the time of year and strangely enough, the first image I took in the project.

This leaf looks nothing at all as you see it normally. I wouldn't have given it a second glance had it not been for the delicate curve of the leaf end and the veins that stood out like the veins on the hands of an elderly man. In the end I discovered that what is drab and uninteresting in colour takes on a wonderful texture and beauty when stripped down to the grey values alone.

My posts are all on my blog: https://www.elliekennard.ca .

#BWProject26 | Curated by +Tisha Montgomery +Brandon Luk +Lauri Novak +Al Chris

#allthingsmonochrome +All Things Monochrome by +Charles Lupica, +Enrique Pelaez, +Brian Cox, +Dorian Stretton and +Bill Wood

1498

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Rockport Harbour, Maine

Posted by Ellie
Rockport Harbour, Maine - Ellie Kennard 2015
Rockport Harbour, Maine – Ellie Kennard 2015

Original Post: Week 20/26: Leading Lines

Small harbours hold a fascination for me, as everything seems to be moving in slow motion, but going nowhere, at least most of the time, held more or less in place by lines. People of all ages with fishing lines hanging over the dock stand still, silently watching for any movement to their lazily bobbing floats: yachts at anchor move almost imperceptibly around their tethering lines, rocked by the gentle swell of the tide: this oarsman guided his little craft with slow deliberate strokes of the oars into position to tie it to the line at the wharf alongside the others. Everything seems to move almost in slow motion, constrained in some way by lines. And all of these lines lead to the sea.

For a theme of “Leading Lines” there can be few places with more lines than a small harbour such as this, in Rockport, Maine.