...My Bubbles (you have to imagine the fish voice)

I have been contemplating joining the Red Dirt Camera Club for a while now. Finally, last week, I was not indisposed for their monthly meeting, so I toddled along. It was great to get together with fellow enthusiasts and learn from others in the same position as I am - experimenting and having fun.

Each month there is a topic, to which you submit your best photo taken during that month and you vote on your favourite at the next meeting. This month the topic is black and white. I have never done much in the area, except one or two conversions just to see how they look. At the meeting we were given a few tips which was fab, so I decided when I got home at 9:30pm to make a cup of tea and experiment. I converted a couple of my images to black and white, just to see what they looked like. Then I started to play. I changed the contrast and the saturation, constantly flicking between colour and black and white to see the effects in both.

I must say I was blown away by the difference in technique. It finally clicked with me (to whom the obvious is not always so) that, well, there is no colour in a black and white photo! You are relying on contrast and tone, composition and subject. For someone as passionate about colour as me, this was quite a challenge!

My favourite black and white photo was this one below. I may or may not enter it, it depends what happens next weekend. Believe it or not, this is a tiny corner of a photo taken of a wave hitting a bit of coral at Conzinc Bay, on the Burrup. I was testing my Macro lens on the coral, and it turned out there were bubbles in the picture! Woo! I increased the contrast to pretty much the max, and cropped it to size.

Canon EOS 50D f/2.8 1/4000, ISO 100, 100mm(Macro)

I'm not completely sold on the composition. Due to the depth of field, not all the bubbles were in focus, but I didn't want to make the picture too thin. Maybe bubbles are something to try again one day.