Category: Mono

Blog, Flora, Mono

Mono Monday-Through the ages

Dave Wares

Title-Through the ages

A straight forward shot today but sometime simplicity works best. As you can probably tell this is a close-up of a sawn through piece of tree trunk, but what caught my eye the most was the definition the light was having on the rings and ripples due to months of weathering. I thought that this would be a perfect candidate for black and white as even though the trunk was monotone in nature to begin with, converting it to tones of grey simplified it even further.

It almost looks like it could be a study of the skin of an elephant or rhino too.

Thanks for stopping by and please take a look at my latest ‘Scenic Outlook’ post over at Current Photographer, this week aimed at the beginner Landscape photographer.

Blog, Events, HDR, Mono, Tips

Mono Monday-Morgan

Dave Wares

So I thought I’d continue with another shot taken a couple of Sundays ago at Bodiam castle for this weeks mono Monday. For this shot I got in close with a fairly wide angle (26mm on cropped sensor) to try and achieve a more dynamic view of this classic Morgan, keeping the aperture to a modest f8 to throw the background just out of focus to create a sense of depth. I still bracketed my shots due to the harsh sunlight but when it came to putting them all together in Photomatix, the top half being of soft focus did not work out at all well, with lots of nasty edges to be seen. I decided the best way around this would be to bring both the HDR version and one of the single brackets into Photoshop combining them using layers, then I gently erased the top half of the HDR image to reveal the single exposure underneath . So what you see above is a mix of both HDR and a single exposure.

The next step was to bring this back into Lightroom, where I used a combination of two or three of onOne software’s free plugins to convert to black and white, then I continued to tweak things until I was happy. HDR mono is not something I’ve really done before, I hope you like the result.

Thanks for looking.

Blog, Mono, Urbex

Mono Monday-The Haunted Manor

Dave Wares

Title-The Haunted Manor

Just a quick post today as I’ve been busy with other things, however I wasn’t going to miss posting another image for Mono Monday. This picture has been sitting on my Hard drive for some time but not seen by anyone until now.

Due to the dilapidated nature of the building I thought that applying a selenium tone would give it a slightly spooky feel.

Thanks for stopping by.

Blog, Mono

Mono Monday-Stargazing

Dave Wares

Title-Stargazing

So here we are with another mono Monday image. This was taken a couple of years back whilst on a trip to London with my cousin and a couple of his friends. I like how I’m taking a picture of someone appreciating another photographers work. There’s a simplicity about having just the one person in the frame that appeals to me, had there been more it wouldn’t have worked so well, if at all. Black and white just seems to be the right choice for this picture.

I’ll have to make a return visit at some point and have another stab at some street photography as it’s an area I really need to get more confidence with.

Btw, I am now on Google+

Blog, Mono

Mono Monday-on a coffee break.

Dave Wares

image

So Mono Monday has come around once again, but for this one I am here to tell you that there are a few things happening right now that are taking my attention away from this blog. Nothing bad mind. First thing is that my stepson and his girlfriend are moving into their first home and so I’m helping out with that. The second thing is my wife’s 40th birthday which is coming up in the next week, and we’ve been busy arranging her party. Oh and there’s one more thing, this time related to photography that hopefully will come my way shortly, I’ll let you know as and when.
Until then I will be taking a short break from posting anything but I intend on keeping this a short a time as possible.
Thanks for all the comments and tweets that you’ve given me. Be back soon.