Linus (our new Mini Cooper convertible) and I made a little tootle down river today to enjoy a wonderful late summer day, meandering along the Mississippi to the Stockholm, WI area. Here are some scenes from along the way.
All images captured with my Pentax K3-III Monochrome DSLR, with 15mm and 35mm lenses, fitted with a red filter to darken the blue light spectrum. Click on any image to see a larger format slideshow.
I recently spent a bit of time at the public runway observation area at the Mpls/St. Paul International Airport. Delta Airlines was the main attraction that day. From a distance I saw a couple other names, but the views weren't worthy of a photo. Shots captured with an old manual focus Pentax 50mm lens and a modern 100mm macro lens, and yellow and red filters to darken color tones and create some contrast.
There was about 6" of snowfall a few days ago but today was sunny and into thawing temps. I gathered the camera and went to see what was happening at Silverwood Park not far from home. Feb 18, none of that snow remains on the lake ice, and the ice is retreating a few feet from the shorelines already. Here are a few photos captured through the 35mm lens, sporting a red color filter to darken the complimentary colors of red a few shades. Click on any image to see a larger slideshow.
Photos from a really, really early spring drive to see small town MN at Kasson, Mantorville, and Wasioja. Wasioja's time came and went a century ago, but a few locals still reside in the area. Mantorville, as a gentleman who is on the local historic commission explained, is the more historic town, while Kasson is described as a bedroom community of Rochester. Both seem to be nice place to live. The signs in the following photos tell the stories of the subjects. Click on an image to see a larger size slideshow. All photos captured with a Pentax K-3 III Monochrome digital camera through a 15mm wide angle lens fitted with a yellow color filter (to darken the sky a bit).
I should have taken a photo of the plaque at the water tower. It has been decommissioned, but it is on the National Register of History Places. National Register application form And from Wikipedia- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasson,_Minnesota
After many years of my photography life being on the back burner, with the heat turned off, a recent photography event concentrating on black and white sparked the flame of my interest. My interest in black and white, or monochrome, photography parallels the reasons commonly stated for its use: it eliminates color and the emotional response it can trigger and instead concentrates on pure tones of light and dark, and sometimes a deeper meaning of a scene- a subject- that may be hidden by a wide spectrum of beautiful colors. Maybe there's a message, and sometimes the image is about patterns and allowing the eye to dance across the scene in a world of imagination. Monochrome image-making is more challenging for me, forcing a closer examination of a scene for those tones of light and dark and how they can be captured and expressed in an effort to relay a message we may otherwise look past as we react to the colors our eyes naturally see. Color is primal to us, monochrome strips that away and forces the photographer and the viewer to see things differently, whether subtle or impactful.
For a long time, I'd occasionally research to see if any digital camera manufacturers had brought out a monochrome camera (no color capacity)- nope, nothing. I tried black and white film, having our 1970's-era Pentax film camera professionally serviced. I was hoping photography would come back into my life. One roll of film, and driving across town (twice) for development, and the cost of the development... film was a no-go. I tried simply converting digital color images to black and white, but the challenge wasn't there for me. Photography had not returned. (I'm a photographer, well, a photographer on hiatus, and even though I use the camera on my cell phone as much as the next person, I don't consider a camera phone to be a true tool of photography.)
This recent event caused me to check again to see if a monochrome digital camera was being made. Yes, one manufacturer in Germany was making two of them, priced between $6000-10,000. No thanks. But one other came up, from Pentax of all places. I'd previously owned a progression of 3 Pentax digital SLR cameras, selling off the last of them about 4 years ago. Just this past year they brought out the latest version of my last camera, as a monochrome! A week later I had the camera and one lens in my hands. And I changed my attitude, no longer waiting to see if photography would come back knocking at my door, instead I opened the door and invited it back in.
These photos are the effort of getting to learn how the new gear works, and how to "see" without color. And dusting off those old skills of manipulating exposure and composition to get a good photo. Here are a few examples. (Click on an image to get a full screen view.)
