Black and White Wednesday

I still consider myself a beginner in this new hobby of photography. It's been just over a year since I purchased my first DSLR camera. I think I have worked pretty hard at it even though I work full-time and then try to spend most of my remaining hours in quality time with my family. I have edited a few shots in black and white, but it is rare for me. These past couple of weeks, I have made a greater effort to work with images in black and white.


This first shot is of Pearl from this past weekend. I sized the original a little too large for this web page, so if you want to view it larger, click on it and then click on "all sizes" after you are linked to my flickr stream.

We traveled to San Luis Obispo to a mini-college reunion of architectural engineering graduates from Cal Poly. Both Pete and I were ARCE majors and we met in college, 25 years ago. In three days, we will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary.

After the reunion, we explored the town to see how much it has changed over the years. We usually come by here every year or two since we only live a couple hours away. The changes in this town are amazing. This picture of Pearl was taken on the steps of the mission (one of the original California missions). It is one of the few buildings in downtown SLO that hasn't changed, and I hope it stays that way.



Hopefully, in a day or two, I will get the rest of the pictures up from last weekend. My second black and white shot was taken almost two weeks ago in the yard of my old house. It closed escrow last week. The mother in this young family is a dear friend and former employee who has helped us so many times over the years. It was my pleasure to practice on her and her family as I try to expand my photography skills. I liked this shot because it felt so natural and so tender between them. The son is sitting on a stone pillar and has his hand on his Dad's hand, which is resting on his leg. You can see his Dad's wedding ring. The parents are obviously engaged in the activity of their sweet baby girl. I think it tells more of their story than the posed shots where everyone is looking at the camera, although we took plenty of those shots too.

For some reason, I couldn't make the button above link you to Lisa's wonderful site, so if you would like to see more black and white images, go here.