Some black and whites from today

[cpeay]

 

[John27]

Now THAT is my kind of black and white.

I am actually not a big fan of black and white. I think it's cliche and super super super super super super super super super [...] overdone.

BUT, these are the shots I LOVE to see in Black and White. Ultra sharp, tons of detail, just really immaculate marvelous photos. These same images in color would be less exciting because the contrast of black and white increases the sharpness of the detail (in my eyes, anyway). These aren't black and white for the sake of being black and white, these are black and white to accent details, to add to the photograph, not take away!

If it means anything coming from this amateur, those are super shots, I like them alot!

 

[thetrue]

Very nice. I love the ice formation on the right side of #1.

 

[FanBoy]

I like the repeating patterns in both.

The second one has good flow through it down to the solitary tree in the distance. Good work!

 

[LaFoto]

Are these HDR photos in b&w? They sure look like it.
They're both good - compositionally and with regards to detail and tones. I like them both!

 

[amolitor]

The first one strikes me as visual chaos. I don't see any visual center, really. It's not obvious to me what I am supposed to be looking at, so I look at everything, and there's just piles of detail and stuff everywhere. Is that snow and ice? Or water? The processing makes it unclear what quite a bit of the stuff even is. The HDRing has killed the light pretty thoroughly. The fairly strong perspective solves some of the problems that light solves, which is good, but there are still unsolved problems: The image looks quite flat, especially the foreground, and the lack of shadows again makes the entire image seem equally important which circles back to the "what am I supposed to be looking at in here?" problem.

The second is a much stronger composition. Again, the light has been killed by the HDR, but the perspective and composition are strong enough to carry the image without the help of a strong modeling light. It's clear where I am supposed to be looking, the depth in the scene is clear. There's just as much detail as in the first one, but it's more organized into "this stuff is important" and "this stuff is to be enjoyed at your leisure". Also, the sky is much more interesting, which helps out a bit more here.

I dislike the first, and quite like the second. They're both a little hard to look at due to my prejudices as an Old Dude, but that's on me, not you.