Welcome to the second installment of this blog post. Like in the first post, I will share ten landscape photographs which were taken on the banks of the Rhine in the Ruhr Valley, Germany, with their fascinating mix of nature and industry. Let’s get started right away.
Today I’d like to share this new image of Tuan with you, the male orangutan in Hamburg’s zoo, the renowned Tierpark Hagenbeck. I have photographed Tuan several times before. In fact, he „modeled“ in some of my best orangutan portraits to date. A couple of weeks ago, he did it again. Attached with the image you will find at the end of this post, and there is a story I’d like to share with you today.
For about six months I have put my animal portraiture aside and focussed on other things. In this time, I haven’t been at a zoo at all. The animals portraits I might have posted on social media were old photographs from my archives. But things have changed now, last month I purchased an annual ticket for one of the local zoos – and I plan to resume taking black & white portraits with renewed vigor. Here are the first results.
Let me introduce you to Bobby. Bobby is a very special Gorilla. He is the heraldic animal of the Berlin Zoo, the first Gorilla ever to live there. And he is dead.
„With all these sensational black and white image challenges going around social media lately, who else has been craving a slice of color? Well, time to bring out your glorious sunsets. Show us a hint of pink… or the sky on fire!“ This message is what my friends over at The Arcanum posted recently on Facebook. But why? Monochrome sunsets are so much more interesting!
Recently, I learned that some of my images received awards and recognition in a couple of competitions I participated in. So, in an act of shameless self-promotion, I’d like to present to you the award-winning photographs.
In this post, I demonstrate my monochrome conversion process and how it integrates into the (almost) exclusively monochrome workflow I outlined in my last blog post. It looks pretty convoluted at first, as it involves 4-5 different apps/extensions, but it is pretty straightforward once you get used to it. Read on to learn more.
As a digital black & white photographer, the 21st century isn’t exactly the perfect time to live in. Virtually all digital cameras take pictures in color and those that don’t cost a fortune. Of course, every camera has a black & white mode, but this only means the camera is doing the critical job of black & white conversion for the photographer – not exactly the perfect solution for the creative mind. So, how can we solve this problem and create an (almost) monochrome photography workflow with today’s digital cameras? How can we (almost) free ourselves from colors?
