10 Black and White Days – Set 01
Leave a commentDecember 3, 2022 by bck1402
I started out with photography with a very simple camera that still relied on a roll of film. It was a Konica Tomato, and yes, it was red. It was a simple auto-focus camera meant for snapshots. Snap a photo and it would automatically roll over to the next frame, ready for the next shot. For the preteen kid I was, it was as easy-to-use as it got. I just had to learn how to latch the film into the reel properly so that when I closed the back case, it would roll the film into position.
It was probably more than five years later when I would handle a more complex camera, learning about exposure scale, ISO, f-stops, and finding the focus among other things. It wouldn’t be until art school when I would learn to process black and white film in the school’s photo studio.
It was something I really got into. Even after I left art school, black and white photography was something I would still do from time to time, except most photo shops or kiosks would hardly want to process the films in their machines. Most shops stopped selling the film altogether.
The advent of digital photography closed a lot of those shops and I eventually stopped using the SLR camera (still sitting in a box). Instead, my ‘smartphone’ became a camera first, walkman second (until the SD card died and I’ve never replaced it), and I very hardly use it as a phone except in an emergency. No one really calls me and I hardly call anyone. In that respect, I managed to settle on a very cheap pre-paid call plan (I pay only a yearly subscription) and have no data plan. Very inconveninent to a lot of officials, but at least I’m not paying a monthly fee for a service I barely use on a yearly basis much less monthly.
Anyway, I’ve been doing this little black and white project for a few years now. Going out to look for something to shoot on a daily basis.
Day 01 – Old Phones
What better way to start this project celebrating old tech by taking a photo of some old tech. I stumbled across this little shop with lots of old stuff on display including these old rotary phones. The one in the foreground was probably from a hotel considering the icons featured with each number.
It also wasn’t lost on me I was taking a picture of old phones with a smartphone.
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Day 02 – Balcony
I was thinking of a nice landscape or skyscape when I stepped out of a mall to its balcony. Then I noticed these little, probably artistic… things and lined up a shot through one to the next. Just lots of lines with the sky in the background.
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Day 03 – Tree
Nature creates its own patterns. One big tree and the sky.
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Day 04 – Stream
To be fair, I did take pictures on other days (I’ll share some of the ‘alternatives’ in the third set) but there was a lot to shoot around this community park, affectionately called a “Japanese Garden” by the locals. I guess it’s mainly because of the stream cutting through it? I never really knew why. In any case, the tree above and the shots below are all from the same park
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Day 05 – The Upshot
This is one of several recurring ideas. It started as a simple shot of taking a picture of a brick wall, except that the camera was facing upwards, and what came out was a very interesting landscape shot of ragged cliffs. I started experimenting with other surfaces and textures, and trees often seemed interesting, but difficult. I have other shots with trees in the same manner to be featured in the alternatives.
The moss on this tree and the angle made it look like the canopy of a forest or some lumpy meadow going up a hill. In colour (seen below) makes the idea less obvious tho, I think.
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And that’s the first five days.
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Berning Along 