Taking an ordinary photo and turning it into a black and white version is a great way to start looking at how you compose a shot with value in mind. Value and contrast become the main actors.
So here is a water view of the Unique Brilliance, a cargo ship anchored on Plumper Sound, between Saturna and Pender Islands, for several weeks this summer.
Seen from the water level, a cargo ship is a veritable wall of rusty steel. In the late afternoon, I like the contrast of the anchor chain, and even rows of rivets show up.
I liked this exercise of translating my pics to black and white – to check out whether they remain “interesting” minus the colour – so much that I worked on a few pictures last weekend, and created a new Black and White photo gallery with the ones that “passed the B&W test”. Have a look!
