Happy Sunday! This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is hosted by Patti and we are exploring color versus black and white photography this week.

My aunt and I went bald eagle spotting yesterday. Unfortunately, that was the only thing we didn’t get to see. My aunt, with her binocular, eagerly searched while I concentrated on traversing the unpaved road. We ended up seeing some extraordinary wildlife like this…fox? coyote? wolf? I can’t really tell from this distance. I say fox, my mom said coyote, and my aunt said wolf. It’s a mystery, alright.

This photo was taken at 400 mm and without a tripod, the subject (whatever it is) was pretty blurry especially I had to do a manual focus as my auto focus glitched on faraway subjects. When I was editing the photo in Lightroom, I thought about making it black and white. After all the adjustments, the photo no longer looked real. It looks kinda like a painting, don’t you think so?

With the subject in black and white, it becomes very difficult to tell what it is. I don’t know about you but I’m the type of person who can only tell it’s a fox by the color of its fur. I saw red fur, and it was why I went with fox. When I saw the topic for this challenge, I decided to give it a go and I have to admit that I like the black and white version better than the color.

What about you?

It was not a sunny day yesterday, can you tell?

That was the reason why I was so hesitant to go in the first place but I went anyway because I was suffering from cabin fever. Throughout the entire trip, the clouds threatened to snow or rain and temperature didn’t budge as it sat firmly at 32-degrees-Fahrenheit (0-degree-Celsius). It was cold and not the low-humidity kind of cold.

I shot this picture when I got out to stretch my legs. Contrary from the first pair of photos, I had no intention of turning this photo into black and white because it couldn’t tell the story I wanted to convey, even though I do think it looks pretty good for a photo.

From looking at the photos, I can see the emphasis has shifted between the color and black and white photo. For me, when I look at the color photo, my attention rests just below the horizon, right about the white spherical water tower. When I look at the black and white photo, however, my line of sight shifted to the clouds.

Did it do that to you?