Tag: B&W

My Leica Monochrom

Dogs prefer GMC.
Forest floor.
Enjoy the scenery.

(Yes the only way to get a decent image out of the Panasonic Lumix ZS60 is in B&W.)

This will be boring

Monday. -15F/-26C. Went for hearing test. No problem found. Nice, except it doesn’t deal with the tinnitus issue. I was kind of expecting this “null result”.

Tuesday. -30F/-34C. Not going to do anything. That lasted 15 minutes, until I had to go into town to get the neighbour’s grocery pick-up because their vehicle wouldn’t start. I was not expecting that.

Weather forecast says more of the same, maybe a little less brutal, for the next week. Egad.

Oh it’s too cold to take pictures, and not just because only a moron would take their gloves off in these temperatures. But here are some “leftovers” to look at.

Somebody is going Jeeping.
Snowflakes, the hard way.
Snowflakes, the hard way.
Snowflakes the easy way.
Flock away!
Ice cold moon.

Still no lens adapter, after more than a month. Apparently after it was handed over to Canada Post, they lost it. Or else it was stolen by a gang of International Lens Adapter Thieves. After all, it’s worth almost $10.

We still have no vaccine either. That’s worth a lot more, it seems.

Leftovers

Some odds and ends shots in black & white.

Fog, not smoke haze.
Downy woodpecker. This was colour, but the ‘blown out’ portion was a ridiculous mess of white, yellow, and green while the bird was pretty much B&W in shadow. Desaturation solved the problem.
Mushrooms are in bloom.
Vigilant robin.
Beached shoes.
Male varied thrush hunting seeds in the bushes.

The fine details

There are times when colour distracts from the image. When the subject is about shape, form, texture, lines – this is when monochrome works better. Here I present three images shot in colour and desaturated to black & white. These are “100%” views; cropped out of the full-size rendering not shrunk to fit. In fact I’ve gone with 2X the size I normally post in order to make the details more evident. On the other hand there’s only three pictures whereas usually I post six or eight. A bit of a ‘step up’ from my usual “professional snapshot” grade pictures.

The camera used is the amazing Nikon P610.

DSCN2218B

DSCN2213

DSCN2211

The Trestle Series

Jim Grey likes to take pictures of bridges. Who can blame him? They’re interesting from both an aesthetic and a historic point of view. He keeps making me think of all the bridges I’ve come across, or gone across, over many years and roads. One time when I’d looked at a train trestle he posted I got to thinking about the forgotten one in my hometown; a structure abandoned in a field from a long-removed train track. Remnants of that line were in evidence all over during the time of my childhood, mostly in the form of rails still embedded in the road whereas the rest of the tracks had long been taken up.

Anyway, I forgot about it shortly after seeing his pictures. If there’s one thing old age does it’s make it easy to forget. Besides, I would never be going back there again so I wouldn’t be getting any pictures of that trestle – even if I could hike to it. A small part of my mind (about all that’s left of it) wondered if I ever had? But no, even if so those images would be lost along with the thousands of others that disappeared.

Lately I’ve been going through the few old pictures I have found, and in a pure case of serendipitous Zen (or something) … well it’s unbelievable but there were some pictures of that old railroad trestle! These were on some Kodachrome slides, and they didn’t fare well. They are in B&W now because the colour was horrific and two of the images had severe light streak damage, which makes me think it’s another test roll from one of the 60+ 35mm cameras I’ve owned. They weren’t all winners.

The trestle itself was a stone structure built to carry the tracks over a small, permanent stream. It is way off the main highway – and was even further off before they put Rte. 63 through there. I doubt anyone else knows it’s there, not even whoever owns the land now.

trestle1

trestle2

trestle3

trestle4

(I don’t really know what that last bit is, but it was near the trestle.)

As you can see, it was a bit the worse for age and lack of maintenance even back then.

There are other stories connected with this trestle, the old rail line, and the days of my youth, but the amazing thing here is that I came across these few photos of it. There were a lot of relics of the past hanging around the area when I was young, and I didn’t think to photograph them then. Too late now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, except for the sensation of angst that comes with it.