My Monochrome Epiphany

 I spent the morning in Marin County, first at China Camp State Park, and later at the Marin Arts and Garden Center. These four monochromes were the result of consciously looking for interesting shadows. It turns out that I made images when the subjects were when the shadows made interesting shapes, or when the lighting created contrast between the subject and the background. The camera's LCD panel gave an instant monochromatic preview, one that would be relatively easy to finetune in post production.

Arbor, Marin Arts And Garden Center

Display, China Camp

Skiff, China Camp

Marsh, Richardson Bay

When I entered China Camp's long abandoned burger shack, I was confronted a shadowless. north lit environment created by skylight coming through the windows. Here, the separation of the subject, or subjects, from the background would need to be accomplished using color. It's quite a luxury to shift from a monochrome preset to one of several color presets where I could select the level of color saturation.

I had the white balance set to "auto", and did a white balance adjustment in post production. I think that the image was definitely a "color" proposition, since the subtle colors would not translate well into black and white. I used the napkins as my white reference. Incidentally, in 1955 scenes from the movie "Blood Alley" were filmed here, which explains the movie poster on the back wall.

For this shot, I took a few steps back to include the orange lantern hanging from the ceiling. The inclusion of the additional seats at the counter give a better sense of the whole room, rather than just the memorabilia on the far wall.

The weathered exterior and its faded painted signage seemed to be a shot that would benefit from a color interpretation.

While this shot does have some color, the aged wood is essentially grey in color. The yellow and green of the central bush would have been lost it the image was rendered in black and white.

This has been a good day for playing with monochrome presets. I guess I can put off buying that dedicated monochrome camera body for a little while.