This week, for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #146, Patti has challenged everyone to focus on the details.
I spent a while pondering about this topic.
Focusing on the details, mmm… Focusing on details…
And then, like a lightbulb going off in my head, I got it.
As I probably mentioned in past posts, I love taking close-up photos. Close-up photos bring out a lot of the details that a pair of human eyes would had missed. It’s one of many reasons I love photography. There are things you can only see through a camera.
Like the ability to see black and white. I wanted to keep this photo in color but the green of grass would had been the foreground and the snowflakes would had been an afterthought. It took me a while to decide what to do but I ended up choosing a square crop and turning it black and white to hopefully bring out the detail of the snowflakes.
A few weeks ago, when I visited the Utah State Capitol, I was the witness of a bunch of kids having some bubble fun. I saw it as an opportunity to practice action photography. I only brought one lens on my trip that day – 17 – 70 mm lens – so I just had to work with what I got.
I was glad the lens was fast and sharp, otherwise, I would’ve missed the details.
I decided to do an image comparison for the image above – color vs black and white. I like the black and white version because I thought the color version felt too busy. I tried to apply the same edit – put a radiant gradient apply some dodge (brighten) around the boy in the middle to focus on him more – on the color version but it ended up looking weird.
By darkening the scene around the boy in the middle, like in a story, it provided a central character for the photo and I think that’s definitely one of the beauties of black and white photos.
Lovely post Yinglan. I liked your comparison of B&W vs color and the kids and their bubbles are terrific!
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Thank you.
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These are beautiful. The BnW versions are grat!
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Thank you.
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Excellent. I love the compare.
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Thank you.
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Great post. I love the bubbles picture in black and white. You did a great job on the conversion.
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Thank you. 🙂
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Hi, Yinglan. That’s a great idea–to show us the same shot in color and black and white. I think the bubbles are really highlighted in the b & w. It also works in the first image to highlight the snowflakes. Nice work!
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Thank you. I agree, there are some details that really shines in black and white.
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Interesting to see the comparison. There seems to be more sense of movement in the black and white picture.
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Really? I felt it had the opposite effect.
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I seemed to notice the children on the left more.
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I agree…some photos seem to be better in monochrome! Nice shots!
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Thank you. 🙂
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Lovely post, great bubbles and the using of slider perfect!
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Thank you.
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The detail of the snowflakes is fantastic, Yinglan 😃
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Thank you. 🙂
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Your experiment turned out a success. The first one is wonderfully amazing 🙂
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Thank you. 😀
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