{"id":1112,"date":"2013-09-04T09:30:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T10:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2013-09-16T14:36:28","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T15:36:28","slug":"exploring-black-and-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":"Exploring black and white."},"content":{"rendered":"
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II am old enough (!) to remember when all photographs were black and white.\u00a0 Indeed until I was in my 20s I mostly took black and white photographs, processing them myself wherever I could create a darkroom, blacking out the windows of the kitchen or bathroom with bin bags and old curtains.<\/p>\n

Back in those days colour was expensive.\u00a0\u00a0 Slides involved the cost of a projector or peering at the slides through a small battery powered viewer \u2013 exciting when you could afford to do it.\u00a0 And there was the anticipation of waiting for the pictures to pop through the letterbox in the yellow bag from Kodak.<\/p>\n

The quality of colour prints was initially not very good and I avoided them \u2013 until the family arrived.\u00a0\u00a0 No time for black and white processing then and colour print film had improved.\u00a0\u00a0 My first photograph album of baby Donald, our oldest son was all black and white.\u00a0\u00a0 Then as the years went by I was won over to colour prints.<\/p>\n

Then came digital photography \u2013 but that\u2019s another story.\u00a0 My initial resistance was\u00a0 followed by a total conversion like most of the photo taking world.\u00a0 You don\u2019t even need a camera now, many phones will do it for you.<\/p>\n

Photography has come a long way from its B&W roots.\u00a0\u00a0 What a joy it has been to rediscover B&W this month.\u00a0 The current\u00a0 project set for the Camera School Course I am following is to take a black and white picture, \u201cfilling the frame with an interesting natural or man-made pattern or texture\u201d.<\/p>\n

I have not yet decided which picture to submit, but below you can see my short list.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Harvest Tracks 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The harvest is in full swing in the lovely sunny weather in Cruden Country.\u00a0 I noticed these tracks in a field on the road to Clola.<\/p>\n

\"Harvest<\/a>
Harvest Tracks 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not all the barley makes it into the trailer.\u00a0 These stalks of barley had been pressed down by the tractor wheels in the harvest field.<\/p>\n

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\"Straw<\/a>
Squaring the Circle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have grown to like the circular straw bales in the harvest fields.\u00a0 Perhaps not quite as picturesque as the stooks of my youth, but they can make a pleasing pattern in the yellow fields.\u00a0 and when you look closely at them……<\/p>\n

\"Straw<\/a>
Straw View<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Or you might look over the bale?\u00a0 Looking towards Auchlethen from a field beside the Hatton Straight.<\/p>\n

\"Fascinating<\/a>
Fascinating Stones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have taken several pictures of stones on the beach.\u00a0 This was a collection of “fascinating” stones gathered by my granddaughter, Eira on New Aberdour beach, and helpfully soaked with buckets of sea water by her brother, Theo (I am the strongest man in the world!) The wet stones in the sunlight have a pleasing texture.<\/p>\n

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\"Rock<\/a>
Rock Layers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A project like this makes you look at detail you just take for granted.\u00a0\u00a0 There are some lovely rock patterns on Whinnyfold beach if you start to look for them.<\/p>\n

\"Twisted<\/a>
Twisted Beech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I love to take the dog for a wee walk through the North Woods at Mintlaw.\u00a0 t’s not a long walk, but the trees are lovely at any time of year.\u00a0 I love this mysterious twisted beech tree.<\/p>\n

\"Blowing<\/a>
Blowing in the wind<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is something very attractive about Pampas Grass blowing in the wind.\u00a0 But I have discovered they are not so easy to photograph because of the wind.\u00a0 The fronds move about quite a bit and it is like taking a picture of a moving animal – difficult to get just the right picture in the frame.\u00a0\u00a0 You also need to make sure that the camera is set at a high enough shutter speed to avoid blur.\u00a0\u00a0 I took a couple of dozen shots of this pampas grass in Park View in Hatton and have chosen this one as the best.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Road Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I like this picture, but it does not really fit my brief.\u00a0 It’s the road back to Hatton, just at the cross road at Newton Farm , near Lenabo.\u00a0 The light was wonderful, the clouds just right.\u00a0 it is a shame that the Council has not filled in the crack in the tar!\u00a0 But I suppose you can’t have everything.<\/p>\n

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II am old enough (!) to remember when all photographs were black and white.\u00a0 Indeed until I was in my 20s I mostly took black and white photographs, processing them myself wherever I could create a darkroom, blacking out the windows of the kitchen or bathroom with bin bags and old curtains. Back in those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1128,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}