Colors .... and Black and White

Beautiful new treasury....

... including my tulips



MadrinPhotography curated this summer bouquet. Mandrin is a fellow etsy photographer (and jewelry maker) Her photography focuses on nature themes. These two black and whites are my favorites:

Hosta

Clematis II

I work mostly in color, but its amazing how sometimes taking out the color, adds so much to a photograph.

In the first one, the silvery tones highlight the beautiful curves of the leaves and the lines of the stems and veins.

In the second, there's something I can't quite put my finger on about the composition and the contrast of the white flower against the dark leaf, that brings to mind the old botanical illustrations.

For a long time, I didn't understand why you would want to take all the beautiful colors of the world and reduce them to grays. But, done right, black and white is both beautiful, and photographically important. Composing a photograph, is mostly about deciding what to include and what to leave out, focusing on one set of visual information by leaving everything else out. Black and white focuses attention on line, shape, texture, composition that we would have missed if the eye was distracted by a bright color.