March Image of the Month

 Here we are again, into another spring. We've had several so far, and I expect a few more. Even though a few plants are coming up in the garden now, some only a foot away from a mound of ice and snow, I don't think winter is done with us. The little plants are optimists. It's no surprise here to see tulips bravely poking up through some snow.

Shooting on film is well underway, though most of the info about that is over on my photoblog page. None the less, film photographs are in the running for image of the month, and why not? In fact, given that I have to think about the film images even more, I'm not going to be surprised if film ends up on the podium a lot.

After I wrote that I dithered for a while, looking and thinking about images. Big surprise, huh. I'm reading the most thoughtful book on photography yet, which slowed and richened the process. I'll be blogging about that book, so stay tuned.

2nd Runner Up

This old shed was mainly shot as an exposure exercise, to thread the needle between the bright snow, and the dark shadows. After a while the texture of the wood and the setting drew me in.

1st Runner Up

Sophia was doing a 12 or 13 K point to point run. I got there early enough to capture the end, and that great big smile of happiness. I took her to our place, we plied her with herbal tea and treats, her husband showed up, I fired up the BBQ for lamb, and we had a wonderful afternoon chatting.

Image of the Month

One of the things I've been trying to work on is photographing ideas, rather than things. It's a work in progress. I found the tree growing out of the middle of a parking lot during a ramble, framed by a building. I liked the juxtaposition, and had done a similar idea back in October 2019.

 One of the fun things about film photography is being able to look at the negative image, and try to picture how the final image will look. We don't think of the negative image that much, especially not black and white negatives. And with digital, of course, the negative image doesn't even exist, unless you really know what you're doing during the edit process.

There is a magic moment during DSLR scanning. The images have been loaded into Lightroom, you've corrected the white balance, and click the button for Negative Lab Pro to do it's thing. Suddenly you see the positive and know if all the care and attention that went into the photo has paid off.

I did that for this image, and was somewhat disappointed in the positive, even after editing. It is just a parking lot, after all, framed by buildings. A bit of a hellish statement on the working life. In the positive the cars dominate the image, the background trees almost disappear, and the interesting reflections in the buildings are hard to see.

But looking at the negative changes all that. In the negative the cars almost almost disappear. The life-giving tree is in white to catch our attention, outlined by the gray building, itself outlined by the dark sky. The background trees form an interface between the parking lot and the buildings, and the buildings themselves are more interesting to look at.

We're so used to looking at things a certain way that changing our perspective can be difficult. Looking at film images is changing my perspective of what I like in a photograph. Yes, film is a lot more work and is much slower. Yes, there's lots of times and places I'll still be shooting digital. But the images I'm getting make me happy, and I'm still really new at this. I'm looking forward to learn how to create even more interesting images.

I didn't have the digital camera with me on this walk, but even if I had, I wouldn't have captured this image. I never would have seen it, and never had the chance to think about the alternative perspective on a a tree in a parking lot. You can toggle back and forth between the negative and positive here. Did seeing the negative change your perspective?