24 Black & White

In this exercise we were simulating shooting in black and white to practice before we use the film cameras. The reason we did this was when we shoot with film we will only have 24 exposures, we will not be able to delete (like we can with our digital cameras), we will not have an LCD either so we need to rely on our knowledge, and finally we need to learn how to use the camera's light meter.

To do this we set the camera to manual mode, set the picture style to monochrome, took 12 images with our ISO set to 100 and another 12 with it set to ISO 400. We kept it locked on these ISO settings because when we shoot a roll of film the film speed is not changeable. Finally we set out to take our 24 pictures. I focused on images with contrast and I think that worked best with black and white.

I learned that some pictures I took didn't look as good as I had hoped because in black and white the colors were too close creating a muddy result, and some of the pictures I took I thought would be boring looked great in black and white. The black and white image seems to remove all distractions and something mundane can look really interesting in black and white.

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12 Images at ISO 100

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I think of all of the images the image of the telephone wires is my favorite. I like this because normally this would be a relatively uninteresting photo, but as a black and white image it is almost an abstract image. The geometric lines make it interesting as a design element as well. I learned that contrast in color works best in black and white and that understanding the principles of design (balance, contrast, repetition, proportion, etc.) help to make the composition stronger and more interesting.