A year in Monochrome

On September 1st of 2017 I decided that I would embark on another 365 challenge, this time in Monochrome. The idea is that each day, for a year, I will post an image in Black and White without boundaries as to what the subject is.

Since arriving here in Poland, color has been the backbone to most of what I do, how I discover and generally what attracts me to the frames I shoot. I love the nature of color and colorful nature in this country and how it can be simultaneously vibrantly absurd and completely different from what I know back in the States while somehow maintaining all of its endearing aspects. The conundrum has been, that I also deeply love black and white, but I never cared to shoot in it because I wanted to show the fun colorful nature of my new life and how it presents itself to me so that I can then share it with the world. (Feel invited to come and see for yourself…if you have never been to Poland, put it on your travel list and let it surprise you.)

The larger reality is that after having shot so much in color and being color focused, black and white has proven to be a little difficult to find my voice in as a medium. I felt like I needed to see again in terms of contrast and light, wrapping my head around how they work together and what drives me in my appreciation for the medium and the emotions it stirs when viewing. Already I am seeing the benefit to stripping the color and laying bare the frame work of what I see and there is an internal conflict rising as my sense of color shifts. Exciting, isn't it?

Follow along as I begin my weekly recap of monochrome images and discuss the images produced and the week spent producing them. I am a little late to the party with that but being a firm believer in “better late than never” I will start at week 10. :)

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