Black, White & Colour

Since starting my new hobby of photography, I've been trying to get as much information and inspiration as I can. I've looked at what other people have done, to see what works and what doesn't. 

Something I came across which I really liked was a photo which was all black and white, except for one small thing, which had been left in colour. It looked pretty cool and I decided I wanted to try it for myself. 

I had no idea how to do that. 

I searched the web and found a couple of photo editing programmes and downloaded them. Some of them are easier to use than others. Some have preset styles which can change the whole picture at the push of a button, which is good, but I want to be able to alter pictures for myself too.

Currently I'm trying paint.net. 

So I had a photo I wanted to play with, and I had my editor programme. I wasn't sure what to do with the programme, so did a Google search. Most tips used Photoshop, but I did manage to find what I was looking for. 

Turns out, the principle is pretty easy. It's a bit like a game of chess, easy to learn, but a lifetime to master. The hard bit for this project was getting the lines exactly where I needed them. 

This is the first of my two pictures...

I joined http://captureyour365.com to get inspiration for photos. They email you a word a day, which you then interpret how you want. The day's word was circle, which inspired me to photograph a CD. (I decided to make it into an actual project, which will be in a later blog post). 

Also I had seen an idea of 'painting' with your camera, by moving the camera as you take the picture. 

So this photo came about from all of those ideas/techniques. 

This is what the original photo looked like...

For my second photo, I used a shot I'd taken from my window. The photo itself didn't really show the clouds as well as I'd hoped, the sky had looked quite amazing. But it was a good test to try with the black & white / colour technique.

Not bad for my first attempts. I know i'll be looking for more photo opportunities to use this technique. 

I'm finding that even when photos don't work, I learn from them and it gives me an idea of how to change it next time.