Diane Arbus, a doyen of black and white photography, once said “It’s important to take bad pictures”, the rationale being that by recognising bad pictures we will understand what makes good pictures. She also said, “I’ve never taken a picture I intended. They’re always better or worse”. I...
What I am learning is that learning to see in black and white is an ongoing process – at least until it becomes a natural and intuitive part of my photographic thought processes. There are so many fine examples of black-and-white photography scattered across the Internet and in reference...
Shooting photographs in black and white can be a bit like stepping back in time – after all black and white photography has been with us for over a hundred years. I like black and white, and lately, I’ve been learning to see in black and white before I...
In my website’s brief “about me” section I describe myself as an opportunist photographer but if I am blunt I would say that I am a procrastinator when it comes to my photography. In the past, I have rarely – if ever -planned to go out and capture specific...
Photographing Trees I never really stopped to think about taking photographs of trees as a specific niche genre of photography. But apparently, it is! A Google search throws up dozens and dozens of pages on how to photograph trees, and here was I thinking there is no right way...
Back in April I wrote a story called Our Favourite Freedom Camping Sites – Part 1. This isn’t Part 2 – that is still to come – probably after we finish our jaunt around the lower half of the North Island in a few weeks. So please watch this...
It might be strange for me to say this, but this collection of photographs of black and white street views was inspired by – or rather motivated by – Canadian photographer Kyle McDougall’s visual story called An American Mile which I stumbled across a few days ago. Sure my photographs...
Should you use photography presets? Do real photographers use photography presets? I ask those questions, especially the second one, a little tongue in cheek because a few days ago a story about photography presets popped up in my Facebook news feed. I read it at the time – but didn’t...
Whether you call it selective colour or selective desaturation, selective colour in black and white photography often seems to get a bad rap. Selective colour is one of many photographic cliches that some photographers think is a practice that should be stopped straight away. However as long as photography is regarded as...
