#1220. #MonochromeAugust (Pixii challenge)

It is now midsummer, in the Northern Hemisphere. At no time in the rest of the year is the light so hard. For nice colour photographs, you often need to be up early or very late. So, how about a month of monochrome? This is the gist of the open participation challenge Pixii is proposing.

 

As always with Pixii news, I’ll keep this purely informative 🙂

The French photo startup who recently unveiled a RAW monochrome mode is launching a fun campaign to promote b&w, and in which anyone can take part, whether they shoot with a Pixii, film, another camera, a phone, a pinhole …

 

The reasoning is simple. Colour photographs are lovely … when the colour is interesting. But that’s not always the case. And, since colour has somewhat become a default setting for most photographers, the very different feeling and technique used in monochrome photography has been lost for some.

So why not scrub the rust away by practising, at the time of year when (in the Northern Hemisphere) light is less conducive to good colour photographs, unless you rise before crickets or are still out when hobbits are considering second supper 😉 ? Of course, residents of the Souther Hemisphere are welcome too 😉

 

The rules are simple. In fact, there are just two: (1) shoot in b&w.

I would recommend focusing on subjects that would give you a hard time in colour. Either because the light is too difficult, or because the colour in the scene is uninspiring, or the photograph is more about shape and light than anything else.

 

Use any camera you want. Shoot b&w in-camera, or convert in PP. Use profiles or presets or DIY processing. Anything goes so long as you create b&w images.

(rule 2) If you post anything online, on your website, on Flickr, on Instagram, on someone else’s website, …, please tag the photographs with #MonochromeAugust, so that it becomes a shared experience 🙂

 

If you are not used to monochrome, you’ll uncover a new dimension of your hobby. One in which light plays a much larger role in the final composition and mood. The scene above is totally uninsteresting in colour and in flat light, for instance.

You’ll also gain a deeper appreciation of what you look for in a colour photograph, when you’ve finished this exercise. Make it as long or short as you want. It’s nowhere near as challenging as an ocoloy round-the-sun torture session, but I feel it brings more benefits.

 

At the end of the month, Pixii will be curating the most interesting photographs made with a Pixii camera.

But I’d be happy to publish a set of nice ones made with any camera, here on DS, so let’s make this a DS challenge. Thanks to a recent comment, I realised I’d completely forgotten about the previous challenge (what else is new? 😆 ) so I’ll publish that one first, but if you’re interested in sending in some b&w photos, just include #MonochromeAugust in the title of your email, send it at pascal dot jappy at gmail dot com, and attach 1 to 3 jpg photos (1500px long edge)

And the results will be published at the end of the month as well. I look froward to your monochromes 🙂 Remember, through: Just tag it 😉 #MonochromeAugust.