Submit Your Own Image(s)

There’s just something about Black & White images. Don’t get me wrong, I love a colorful sunset, or the pop of blue or red from bird in a tree. But knowing I’m going to process an image in monochrome forces me to think more about the scene, the lines, the light, and the contrast. I don’t think I’d want to shoot nothing but B&W, but it sure is a fun once a week project.

Subscribe now

Now on to this week’s images …

Todd Takes Pictures:

My just turned 18 year old daughter got her first tattoo or piercing that I didn’t have to sign a consent form for. She was in the chair for over 7 1/2 hours, but she found a very talented apprentice to do the art. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, how little she paid for this tattoo.

Perspectives - Photography & Writing

Lauri Novak is a fine art photographer and author from Chicago. For this week’s contribution she shared a couple of very cool high contrast architectural shots that she captured in her city.

Valley Images

Dave is my new friend from Australia. Checking out his feed it looks like he mostly shoots wildlife and nature shots like I do. But as you can see below, his black and white images are pretty compelling too.

Inside Wedding Photography

Finally, we’ll wrap things up with my friend Chris who writes a weekly newsletter about the ins and outs of starting a wedding photography business. If you want to learn about photography, marketing, or even just dealing with people, it’s worth looking forward to every weekend.

Submit Your Image(s)

p.s. if this ever grows to a point where we have to limit the number of slots each week, those who got in at the beginning will always have spot if they want it.

Catch you next week,

This is one of my favorite images from our trip to San Diego in Feb. 2025.

Catch you next week,

In 2005 I spent a year at Camp Humphries in Korea. By that point I’d been in the Air Force for 15 years, and I’d spent 15 years trying to avoid getting sent to Korea.

It’s was only about 2-3 weeks after I arrived that I looked in the mirror and asked myself: What was I thinking not wanting to come here?

I was there to forecast the weather, and sometimes had to work hard. But I’m pretty sure we also went down to “The Ville” just about about every evening.

I of course carried my camera almost everywhere I went. I was shooting with an almost new at the time Canon 20D, which usually had either a Tamron 28-75 F2.8 or the “Nifty-Fifty” F1.8 lens attached. I took thousands of pictures during that year. Some of my favorites were the ones that I chose at the time to process in Black & White. Those are the ones I’m sharing here.

These days I mostly take pictures of landscapes and wildlife. But apparently in 2005, I really enjoyed taking pictures of people … especially at the bar.

I don’t even mind the low-light camera shake and high ISO noise in almost all of these images. Kind of makes them feel really “authentic”.

Many of the images I captured were semi-discreet “street” style shots. But I also got some portraits of my workmates, where I’m pretty sure they were aware that my camera was pointed in their general direction anyway. 😎

Being the guy who was known for always having his “nice” camera with him, of course when it was time to get a group work photo, I was assigned the task.

There were other (more “serious”) shots, but for some reason this is the one I had converted to B&W. I brought in a tripod, set the 10 second timer, then sprinted (ha!) back to take my place in the group … can you guess which one is me?

Leave a comment

Catch you next week,

For me, track and cross country season present an opportunity to take pictures of people, instead of mostly the animals and scenery I normally capture here in southeast Arizona.

Most of the daytime meets photograph very nicely in color. But a couple of times a years when the races take place after the sun goes down, many of the images I capture already have some motion blur and contrasty lighting.

It’s like they’re almost begging …

This was especially the case with my Sony a6000 and TTArtisans 25mm manual lens combination. I’m still getting used to the exposure and metering settings in low-light with this camera. Even with this lens, I use Aperture priority, but since there are no electronic connections the F-stop is not recorded in the exif data.

The sunset shot above I believe was either F5.0 or maybe even F8.0. It was a 1/60 second exposure at ISO 250. It looks like I had a little camera shake, but there’s something about the over-all look of the final image that I like anyway.

The crowd shot below as also taken with the Sony. This one I’m almost positive was wide-open at F2.0. Also 1/60th of second, and ISO 3200.

The images below were taken on my Canon 80D with a 70-200 F2.8L lens attached. lol, yes, I was one of those guys walking around with multiple cameras around my neck and in my hands. I suppose if you count the very capable Pixel 9pro XL phone in my pocket, I technically had three different cameras.

I did of course also take some pictures of the runners themselves.

Whether it’s day or night, I like these shots of runners where there is a nice combination of motion blur from the movement of the runners, combined with a few in focus and sharp facial expressions.

To wrap things up, I’ve know Coach Bristow for 4 years now, and at every meet I always like to get at least a couple of image of him doing his thing.

Catch you next week,

Catch you next week,

A few Black & White photographs from this past week.

In week one I’m still finding my style, but if I had to pick my own favorite image from this past week, it’s this group of birders at Ramsey Canyon. I’ve gotten into the habit of draping one of my small light cameras around my neck, even while I’m carrying the 80D with the big Sigma Lens. In this case the 14mm manual lens I had attached to the EOS M captured the scene perfectly (the lens has strong vignette, but I kind of dig the look), then it worked even better in B&W.

We had a B-1 bomber do a touch and go approach at our airfield on Thursday. I’m still editing most of the hundreds of images that I took. This shot below is one that looked equally cool in both color and black and white.

Also on Thursday, it rained really hard in the afternoon, so we headed up to the waterfall in town to see it running. We weren’t the only ones. There were a lot of cars parked along the side of the road. These four teens apparently parked even further away and walked most of the way up the mountain. I like the contrasty “just before sunset” lighting in this scene.

This single monsoon thunderstorm cell started firing off just after sunset on Friday night. Fortunately I had a tripod in the Jeep, and I’d been wanted to try long (2 second in this case) exposures with the 14mm manual lens. I’m happy with the way this scene turned out.

Most of my wildlife photography will be processed in color and posted over on The Open Vista. But this shot of two leopard frogs, with the way the light was providing such nice contrast just screamed “I need to be shown in B&W”.

Catch you next week,

Do you like nature and wildlife pictures (in color)?

Check out my other site:

Todd Takes Pictures

Birds, insects, reptiles, wildlife, weather, and the beautiful scenery of southeast Arizona.