Roses are...Pink (aren't they?)

Again, another experiment with the black and white. First though, a little introduction (and a touch of photographer envy).

Cameras, good cameras, are a dime a dozen at the moment, especially in the Pilbara. Everyone is taking photographs with fancy cameras. I sometimes worry that I am just another hick, jumping on the bandwagon, thinking I'm fancy because I've got myself a DSLR, can twiddle a few dials and tweak a few things here and there in Photoshop.

Then I see friends post amazing photographs on Facebook, or seem them on their blogs, or in their Photobooks and I groan. "I know how to do that," I'll say, but internally knowing the truth that knowing how and actually doing are two completely different things.

So, twice in the past month I have set myself the challenge of not actually saying "I know how" but actually doing. Much easier thought than done, as it turns out.

One photo that regularly makes the portfolio of the budding (excuse the pun...you will get it in a minute) photographer is the black and white flower. Enter challenge number one - a black and white rose. (Roses were the flowers that week).

I set up my tripod, precariously on the table, and got my remote out and made sure my subject was well lit. Let the dance begin. The Macro was on, the tripod was moved forward, backward, up, down, tilted and adjusted. As were the flowers, the vase, the leaves, the flowers, the petals. Pretty much everything was touched or tampered with in some way.

I took dozens of photos. Some came out. Some didn't.

Best of a bunch - Canon EOS 50D f/32, 15 seconds, ISO-1000, 100mm (Macro). Still getting funny exposures - ISO 1000??? What's with that? What was I thinking? This one was also edited in RAW to correct the white balance for our orange lights in our dining place, increased contrast, and vibrance.

 That was the easy part. Well, actually no I lied. It was hard.

A month later I messed with the colours to try and make them go black and white, to which I succeeded. It's not that hard to make a black and white photo. What is hard is when your subject is one colour and you want as much contrast as possible. In this situation I increased the saturation and contrast to make the shadows as dark as possible. See the step by step results below.

First I increased saturation to as much as I could bear.

I then converted to black and white.

At this point I tried a few things that didn't quite work, so I decided to crop it to just the centre of the Rose.

And then increased the contrast once more for good measure...

It's not as clear as I would like. It probably won't be causing any others out there any photographer envy. But it's a start.