What’s the world coming to – I’m actually posting another black and white photo. That makes two posts in a row with a B&W photo!
Yes, in spite of my self-proclaimed love of strong colors, this is another photo that I feel really works best in black and white. Unlike the previous post where the photo had very muted colors, this one did have a bright blue sky. But, that was the only color , so it was really something of a monochrome photo to start with in that it just had one color. In the end, I felt that the color was actually distracting from the strong lines of the cattails and grasses silhouetted against the puffy white clouds.
This photo is also a good illustration of the value of unusual perspectives. I knew when I saw the cattails along the trail that I wanted to show them against the backlight clouds. That meant a very low camera angle. Since cattails grow in marshy areas, I wasn’t keen on the idea of laying on the ground to get the picture. Instead, I simply held the camera down to the ground and aimed it through “dead reckoning” at the sky. With a little practice you can get pretty good at pointing a camera without looking through the viewfinder. Through a combination of practice and luck, I got the shot I wanted.
