Mono Work
30th December 2013
Taking the colour out of the world and thinking monochrome is a difficult thing to do. As I try to get to grips with this mindset, I find that two major problems beset me.
1. Subject matter
2. Post-processing
Firstly, what are the best subjects for mono photography? Because my shots are all taking in Scotland, there is a constant battle with wind, rain and grey skies. Mountain photography really doesn't work on grey days - you need shadows and the contrast from early morning or evening light. I've not really mastered mono photo skills on mountains even in good light yet, but mountain burns and smaller details seem to work better for me. The area which I have been practising on most is that of coastal photography. I've gone from an initial obsession with sunsets, which most photographers seem to go through, with an urge to capture stormy days and the power of the sea. A shutter speed of around 1/10th of a second seems to work well on capture movement in crashing waves, and two - four seconds for wider angle shots in conveying the effect of wind over the sea/shorescape.
Secondly, post-processing. My initial temptation was to make everything way to contrasty, and then I went too far, resulting in grey, washed out images. I've found that a good way around this problem is to use a polarizer and an ND Grad filter at the same time, which helps to increase exposure times and also add in contrast before the image is fed in into phootoshop.
Here's an image below which nearly worked, but in the end didn't have enough of interest in it.....
1. Subject matter
2. Post-processing
Firstly, what are the best subjects for mono photography? Because my shots are all taking in Scotland, there is a constant battle with wind, rain and grey skies. Mountain photography really doesn't work on grey days - you need shadows and the contrast from early morning or evening light. I've not really mastered mono photo skills on mountains even in good light yet, but mountain burns and smaller details seem to work better for me. The area which I have been practising on most is that of coastal photography. I've gone from an initial obsession with sunsets, which most photographers seem to go through, with an urge to capture stormy days and the power of the sea. A shutter speed of around 1/10th of a second seems to work well on capture movement in crashing waves, and two - four seconds for wider angle shots in conveying the effect of wind over the sea/shorescape.
Secondly, post-processing. My initial temptation was to make everything way to contrasty, and then I went too far, resulting in grey, washed out images. I've found that a good way around this problem is to use a polarizer and an ND Grad filter at the same time, which helps to increase exposure times and also add in contrast before the image is fed in into phootoshop.
Here's an image below which nearly worked, but in the end didn't have enough of interest in it.....