Yes, I know these two little birds aren’t magpies but bear with me…
The original version of the Magpie nursery rhyme only ran to four lines and four birds
One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral
And four for a birth
And while I have seen a version that runs to thirteen (‘beware it’s the devil himself’), on my latest walk I ended up wondering what 40 or even 50 magpies might be. There were just so many of them. There have always been a few on my visits to the lake, but yesterday there seemed to be one after another, after another.
And while I took lots of photos, you won’t see any of a magpie in today’s selection because instead of photographing them, I used them, or rather their colouring, as inspiration for today’s piece. (In fact, if I’m being accurate, I should say their ‘non-colouring’ was my inspiration, as technically neither black nor white is a colour)
So ends my somewhat long-winded introduction.
On a morning with the weather and light changing regularly I thought it was a good time to try shooting in monochrome. It would be an exercise of working without colour and I was keen to see what it made me focus on instead.
The easy answer is probably 2Cs – clarity and contrast,
but that doesn’t do justice to all of the different aspects shooting in black and white made me consider.
Perhaps the first thing I noticed, and it’s something which has been a recurring theme for my photography at the lake, is that it made me look even more closely at some of my subjects.
The pure white swan isn’t actually pure white as you can see when the light catches the texture of its feathers.
When you think about a butterfly you often think first about its wings and the patterns and colours on them but working in black and white I was drawn to the texture of their antennae and legs and even the hair on their back. I don’t believe I would have thought of describing a butterfly as a hairy-backed animal before now, saving that description for an animal like a gorilla.
I took various pictures of birds in flight, and it was apparent how a very dark or very light background worked well on these,
the same was true of a heron sitting high on a treetop
and one or two pictures of flowers and grasses I took.
Though this shaded background worked well as contrast to the white of the gull
Without colour, texture is really important as these shots hopefully demonstrate
The texture doesn't have to be ripples on water
Dragonflies’ wings are often described as transparent but for me looking at them in black and white and extreme close-up I was drawn to the latticework within each wing; tiny, delicate and beautiful.
Black and white landscape photography is a whole genre in itself. I’m an admirer of both Ansell Adams and Don McCullin. The latter may be most famous for his war photography and shots of gritty urban life but nowadays he spends most of his time taking black and white landscape pictures.
I tried a few more landscape style shots and wasn’t particularly happy with the results, a couple were ‘ok’ but hopefully I can do better…
It will be fun trying.
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