…view older images with the thumbnails below…
“Sunlit Veins”
May 8th, 2025
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
Tagged: monochrome
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
Normally graffiti distracts from my nature photos; but in this case, the carvings were so pervasive on this rock that it became an artistic subject in itself. In order to capture “Winding Valley”, I had to stand on this rock, and interestingly there were no carvings on the other side of the boulder.
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
As I climbed up the hill, I found this fallen tree. I love that the branches appear to reach out into the forest. But as I stared at the downed tree, I realized that it may be a wonderful black & white image. I’ll let you decide.
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
Nearly every year, I take at least one trip down to Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum to photograph the butterflies. The Nature Museum has a wonderful year-round habitat for the butterflies, and in the middle of winter with all of the dull colors of nature, it’s relaxing to photograph something with rich colors.
But a friend challenged me to photograph something unusual in black & white; so I chose the butterflies in my second trip to Peggy Notebaert. Can I create interesting images without depending on the vibrant colors of the plants and insects? I am very pleased with the results of my experiment.
One of my favorite things to do in the winter in Chicago is to visit one of the conservatories to see the plants and blossoms. The splash of color does wonders to invigorate my spirit.
But then I tend to create monochrome images out of my trips because I love the textures.
Not every image needs to be award winning; I enjoy looking for abstract compositions, and I’ve photographed this type of plant quite a few times and rarely gotten an image that I liked. But I really like this image – award winning to me.
I don’t ever shy away from editing an image from cropping to color correction to contrast; I almost never show an image before editing.
But every once in a while a scene presents itself that needs no editing, like this one. I did crop this, my lens simply didn’t have the reach for the crop that I wanted; and of course, I changed it to black & white. Some won’t like this image, even more will find an aspect to critique; and that’s fine, after all art is subjective.
One of the beauties of nature is the joy of looking closer. Not only does this fern remind me of nature’s zipper, the closer that you look at the plant, the more you can see and learn; the strands on the branch, the spots and texture on the fronds as well as the serration on the edges of the branches.
I struggled with editing this image. I love the composition, but getting the dark and light not too dark and not too light was a challenge; and I still don’t think I’ve got it right. The light parts just aren’t light enough, and I’ve always struggled with getting monochrome images to have nice lighter parts of the image without having just a texture-less white space. Each photograph teaches us a lesson and often that lesson is “you have a lot more to learn.”
If you visit the lower area of Matthiessen State Park, you can walk through a naturally carved tunnel on the left side of the canyon to get a unique view of the waterfall and cliff face. While I was standing there, I felt like this was my little hiding place, so I edited this monochrome image to match that feeling.
…view older images with the thumbnails below…
Today’s monochrome is a little different; Sarah and I walked through downtown Elgin and took photos of doorways. My original intention was to layer 24 downtown doorways (cause it’s the 24th, you know?) into one montage, but once I layered more than 6 or 8 images, enough details were gone that you couldn’t identify anything in particular. So I adjusted to 3 creations, 7 images each … and I really like the outcome.
Yesterday, on my walk through Elgin with a friend, I photographed this same scene; but I already had a monochrome for yesterday, so Sarah and I went back tonight to capture the scene again for today’s monochrome.
