black and white landscapes

Have you seen the black and white submissions in the flickr pool? Have you really gone and had a look? If you haven't, you really should...they are stunning. It's been a tough one to choose from, I can tell you but I have so enjoyed it. I remember taking our daughter to Venice when she was three and she was disappointed that the city was not in black and white. She had seen pictures of Venice from a long time ago and had concluded that everything from before she was born actually was in black and white. But she had a point; there is something so timeless about black and white images. The faces, the places, the moods, the quiet moments. All so peaceful and focused in black and white. Thank you for sharing those moments with us.

Here's the landscape we lived with in Italy last week. We really used and abused it; we painted it in watercolours (turns out I may be able to take a photo or two, but painting is really not my thing), drew it in charcoal, ate in front of it, watched sunsets over it, looked at the Perseids over it and even played with light painting using glowsticks in front of it. On the day before we left we watched a storm brewing over the mountains and I remember feeling a moment of tenderness for that lone tree, rooted there while the weather and seasons moved around it. I've done all sorts of things to this picture, but my favourite was sticking it through Photomatix for that HDR effect. It gives that extra buzz to the overcast landscape. It was one of the first ways I learnt to process pictures back in April...so easy and yet the response from friends and family was intense.

Uploaded by drdesigns on February 4, 2010

I chose this picture because of the quiet solitude of the tree in the foreground. And yet that tree isn't alone; the beautiful composition shows the other trees also standing there, in the snow, each one fainter than the next. Go and check it out on flickr with the black background; it looks even more stunning. Perhaps I am mentally preparing myself for the winter and this picture reminds me how beautiful it can be, despite the cold! How those seasons just keep changing and their moods with it...timeless...