DropOne

I’m sorry - the blog has been a little dull of late.  But to be honest, we’ve both been so busy working on different projects that we have had very little photo opportunities or time to do bloggable things.  But today we set off for our first Sunday Walk together in absolute ages.  Of course, it was raining, so once again photo opportunities eluded us.  But the gorse was too appealing to miss, and although it is not in full bloom yet, the flowers are enough to brighten up what was a very grey afternoon.

Regular readers will know that this is one of my favourite spots in Assynt.  The Old Soldier’s.  Someone once asked in a comment if it was called that because the trees were like soldiers standing in a row.  Which is a lovely thought, and one I think of every time I see them now, but no.  It belonged to an old soldier who went off to war and never returned home.  But looking at it today, the trees did look as if they were on parade and when I flicked a switch on DigiKam to make the photo into black and white, the trees stood out beautifully.

I used to have a real passion for B&W photography - which is odd, given how much I love colour.  When we lived in a tiny flat in Newlands, South Africa, just around the corner from the very famous rugby stadium which I’m sure will have featured in the recent film, Invictus, Stevan and I used to have our very own photographic studio - inside a cupboard!  I can still smell the processing chemicals, and our very old enlarger had definitely seen better days, but it still worked.  I used to love spending time inside the cupboard, with just the dim red light to work by.   Now you just need to tap a few buttons on the computer and it’s all done.    It seems too easy really.  But sometimes B&W is just what you need to bring out the different shades of dark and light to be found in photographs.   I think that sometimes you can be really surprised, too, by what works as black and white.  The two photo’s below were taken a few years ago at a bonfire,  and while you would imagine that bonfires need the colour in the photograph to make it “work”, actually I like the B&W one more:

Bonfire at the McLeans

What do you think?