LENS-ARTISTS, Photography

Monochrome Animals

Suzy Shipman

This week’s theme for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is Black & White.

My first thought was about the penguins I photographed last week when we went to the zoo…

Penguins
It looked like this Humboldt Penguin was singing!
Penguins
I thought it was feeling a bit left out as it didn’t have a partner
Penguins
There was a lot of penguin romance going on 🙂

However that’s not quite what the theme is about – it’s about black & white photography, rather than photographing black and white things!

So here are some of my other recent photos of animals who aren’t black and white by nature, but look pretty good in black and white:

B&W Rhinos
Mother and son Rhinos – Dakima and Glyndwr at the zoo
B&W Meerkat
Meerkat on relaxed watch at the zoo
B&W Llama
Angry Llama at Dyfed Shires

I turned the photos into black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2, a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom.

In case you’re interested to see how they looked in colour, here they are:

Eastern Black Rhinos
In the original rhino shot, the brightly coloured building in the background spoils it a bit. In the black and white version I chose an option with a gradient which darkened the top of the image so the building became much less ‘in your face’.
Meerkat
I really like both versions of the meerkat image, but the black and white version again removes colourful distractions.
Angry Llama
I think I prefer this colour version of the Llama

It was fun experimenting with colour (or the lack of it), now off to see what everyone else has been up to! 🙂

5 thoughts on “Monochrome Animals”

  1. I completely agree about disguising the bright red of the building behind the rhinos – I didn’t even notice it in your B&W shot! The others work equally in B&W and colour for me, but that rhino shot is a definite improvement 🙂 And thanks for the penguin bonuses!

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