Swan Lake Monochrome, 150

Today I have monochrome treatments from my Swan Lake outing last weekend. You will recognise some of these as being derived from images I have posted yesterday, or the day previous. Others are different shots, in the same places or nearby.

The flat light seemed well suited to the photos in this series – it works for bringing out some of the subtle colours. But the monochrome highlights aspects of the light and really emphasizes some of the textures and overall transforms the feeling of this place. I love the colours and I think that with the exception of a couple of these images (the one above, cattail stumps, and cattail clump below in particular), I overall prefer the colour versions. The colour is cheering at this time of year and it seems wrong to erase it entirely. Still, that is what I have done today, and I hope it does not make you feel too chilly.

I’m going with the gallery again today – I have been waking up tired which means I have to get more sleep and thus even less time for the blog. I hope you don’t mind too much. I kind of like the gallery anyway.

Oh, and by the way. This is number 150 for me. Seems like just yesterday that I started blogging. But here I am, 150 posts, more than 16.5k views, more than 1,000 comments not counting my replies, more than 160 subscribers, and more than 850 images posted. I am still loving it. Though I admit to feeling a tad overwhelmed sometimes by how much work the barest maintenance can be when I get lots of comments (I love comments) or my paid work is consuming a lot of energy or my time is crowded.  The last couple of weeks I have not been able to get out and about the internet to see other people’s work, and I miss that a lot. You may be seeing more posts with a single image, and nearly no words. These bigger posts can be unreasonably time consuming.

Anyway, thanks to all of you who make this all possible and worthwhile. So many viewers and such great comments. I really appreciate your interest and support and friendliness.

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Canon EOS 5D mkii, SMC Takumar 100/f4 macro, ISO 1250, various shutter and aperture settings.

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23 thoughts on “Swan Lake Monochrome, 150”

    • Oh Sally!! Thanks so much. I am getting behind in redistributing awards, but I truly appreciate how you honour me. Thank you again. And also, thank you for coming by my blog so often and commenting and liking. I do notice the frequent visitors, and appreciate you all very much.

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    • Thanks so much Ryan. I really need to get the tripod and macro lens out and do some more. I find that the tripod makes a huge difference, but I don’t like to carry it and fiddle with it on these kinds of walks, so leave it in the car, or at home. I was wishing for sharper images from much of this walk as the higher ISO made it all a bit grainy (which I rather like in the monochrome, but that is another story).

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  6. It’s no surprise that these work very well as black and white. They have a nice tonal range and texture that well suited to it.
    About the gallery – I love it. I’m going to experiment myself with using it in the future.
    Congrats on #150. Another milestone!
    I could not keep up with your level of posts on the blog. I started out doing 3-4 posts a week and now I’m lucky to get out 2. And I miss reading the blogs more than not posting.

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    • Hi Ken – thanks so much. I think I may just have to scale back. I need to be looking more at what other people are doing – the two best ways to become better seem to be doing and studying others. I am missing the second half the last few weeks. And, thanks for your constructive comments and your frequent analysis of what works for you in my pictures, I learn from that too and appreciate it very much – you and Douglas both have done a lot to help with the way I look at things.

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      • And oh yes – about the gallery. It has its up sides in that if you are doing quite a few images it is less formatting time in the blog editing mode. But I find it works better with captions, so they have to be written, and ordering the images in a sensible way (which I did not bother with last night) can be fiddly, and other things like that all mean it does not save all that much time in the end. However, it looks nice and works well.
        For me a big downside is it plays havoc with one’s stats as it counts each view in the gallery as a view and this artificially elevates the count. I had more than 400 views yesterday, about 2 or 3 times more than I would have without the gallery. Its nice to get lots of views, but I prefer the stats to be about viewers of each post, than about each image in each post and I can’t really untangle one from the other. On the other hand, each image takes pretty much the same time to prepare for posting, so maybe it makes some sense.

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    • Hi Mathias – I really like the blowing feather too – I had to wait quite a while for it to slow down enough that it was not all out of focus. I nearly led with this image today. It’s really quite a small feather, from a small bird I expect.

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    • Hi Douglas – and thank you especially for sticking with me for pretty much all of those 150. I think I attracted your attention on my second ever post and you have been a constructive presence in my blogging ever since. I very much appreciate it.

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    • Alessandro – thank you very much. I do not read Italian, but my wife understands Spanish and tells me what you have said. I appreciate your comments, in any language!

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  11. Congratulations on the figures!(150 posts, more than 16.5k views, more than 1,000 comments not counting my replies, more than 160 subscribers, and more than 850 images posted) But more importantly congratulations for getting better each day!~

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