Category: black & white

A new view – near infrared…

At long last I took the plunge and had an old camera converted to near infrared 🙂  It is genre I have long admired and more recently the beautiful work of some fellow bloggers – Infrared Robert, Cybeleshine and Jan Flieger to name but a few.  I took my first images on Friday and in the last 36 hours I’ve had a lot of fun and an equal amount of disasters.  I thought I would share these two taken from outside our house this morning (not the most exciting scenery!) …I have SO much to learn 🙂 🙂

Road A blue sky experiment

The Orchid’s Lure…

On Friday, another visit to my favourite florist (Flowers in a Vase) resulted in me coming home with this beautiful orchid bloom (amongst some other specimens!). I believe it is a genus of the Lady Slipper family  (Paphiopedilum).  I found it both beautiful and wondrous – the insect falls down into the ‘lip’ and it’s only means of escape is a single ‘ladder’ of hairs which leads directly to the flower’s reproductive parts – amazing!   I would love to see what this would look like in UV 🙂

orchid b&w2
Taken using natural light. Please click in for a detailed view

Peeling bark…

This is a gum tree going through its natural process of shedding bark.  Taken on a rainy day, a whole chunk had come away (you can see the stripes on the trunk behind), making this incredible natural sculpture. This is also my entry for the 21st Monochrome Madness Challenge initiated by Laura Macky along with Leanne Cole who is the curator.  Do take time to check out Leanne’s post if you haven’t already..

peeling bark
As always, click in for more detail

 

Feathers in a flower…

Today I visited a new florist (Flowers in a Vase) and spent some time drooling over various stems and flowers.  I came away with a few different specimens which I spent the afternoon photographing with the macro lens 🙂  Here is the first, a type of Protea which is native to South Africa but apparently grows quite happily here in Australia.

white b
Taken using natural light

Hare’s looking at you…!

It hasn’t been a good few weeks for taking any new images (but I’m NOT going to go on about the weather 😯 ).  This is my image for this weeks Monochrome Madness Challenge which is curated by Leanne Cole.  I posted this image in colour last December, but always thought it might work in mono…so here is this beautiful hare – all eyes and ears but now in black and white 🙂

Hare B&W
As always, click for a more detailed image

 

Weathered layers…

Yesterday I found this old tree trunk on its side, it has been there for years judging by how bleached and weathered it was.  I was fascinated by the effect of the weathering, creating waves of texture. Taken in, what seems at the moment, a rare window of sunshine!

wood knot 2
Click for more detail

 

Silhouettes in the fog…

This image sums up the last few weeks of weather for me – foggy, damp and cold.  I took this on my way home from work last week with only about an hour left of any daylight and the fog getting thicker by the minute, manually focused as the camera struggled.  There were trees that I had never noticed before, all in beautiful silhouette because of the fog 🙂

fog
Click for more detail.

 

 

Seashell – Monochrome Madness

So we enter yet another dismal week of weather 😦  This is my entry for this weeks Monochrome Madness Challenge hosted by Leanne Cole and Laura Macky….a great challenge where you get to see a heap of brilliant work in monochrome by a wide range of artists, do check it out.

I’m not entirely happy with my image, I’m rusty with my macro lens, especially putting it on a full frame camera again, but has been good to get it out and actually use it 🙂  Taken using natural light – please click on the image for more detail.

seashell macro 1

First Light – Monochrome Madness

I really enjoy seeing the work of others in the Monochrome Madness Challenge hosted by Leanne Cole.   Here is my offering for this week.  I haven’t had very much experience doing longer exposures in digital and something I would like to do more of.  This was a shot from our trip to the coast last month taken on the first morning where rain quickly followed and the sunrise didn’t really happen.  The second day was much more successful for a colour image and can be seen here.

First light wp