Reflections - B&W

 

This is my first photo for this month’s One Four Challenge. For this photo I ended up taking a rose and spraying it with water to get the water droplets I then poured some water under the rose to get the reflection. In order to get the lighting correct I used my off camera flash with a white shoot through umbrella. In order to get the look I wanted I also made the background completely black in order to keep the focus on the rose and the reflection without any other distracting elements. I have also been  invited to do the Black-and-White 5 days photo challenge so this is the start of that as well. This week you will be treated with just B&W photos and possibly a couple color ones as Wednesday I’ll be posting photos of my new son in both B&W and color. Yes you have to wait until Wednesday, unless you take a look at my Flickr account!

For this first day I would like to invite Emilio Pasquale. Although I do like his color photos I do like to see his B&W and only getting to see them on Monochromia is just not enough. So it’s time Emilio to do 5 posts of B&W!

The rules for the Black-and-White 5 days photo challenge are:
(1) Publish a black and white photo every day for 5 days
(2) Invite someone to participate each day

Here is the RAW version of the above edit for comparison:

Reflections - RAW

RAW

 

One Four Challenge – March Week 1

/ Justin Avery / 34 Comments

34 thoughts on “One Four Challenge – March Week 1”

  1. This picture just blew me… wow! WOW! Love it in the raw version as well as the B&W. Let’s see what you will do with it over the month! Can’t wait for some pictures of your son 🙂

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    • Thanks Sari! I was amazed at the results I was able to get and very happy with them as well. I was going to post the color version but decided on the B&W first for the 5 day B&W challenge. But for the last two edits I have no idea what I’m going to do yet.

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  2. Congratulations on baby number #3. That is so exciting. And, I see from the flicker photos on your sidebar that he is adorable. So cute. Looking forward to Wednesday.

    Your image is breathtaking, wow. The detail and crisp coupled with soft in this image is remarkable. Love the mirror effect with the water reflection too. Looking forward to seeing this over the next month. And, your black and white images for 5 days. I am doing the same this week, decided to post in tribute to Monochrome Madness turning a year old.

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    • Thanks Carrie! It was fun doing this photo as well as the photos of my son but you’ll hear more about the newborn shot on Wednesday. The easy part was finding 5 photos to do for B&W but the hard part was picking out 5. Tomorrow I’m doing a post for Monochrome madness that has my favorite photo at the top of the post along with a gallery of all my submissions for the past year.

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    • Thanks Cybele! I’m almost thinking I want this to be my last photo of a rose since it would be hard to top. I tried some other photos but was disappointed in all of them so this one was actually take 2. At least I didn’t have to go beyond that. Sometimes it gets frustrating when you try photograph something and none of the photos are really turning out how you want them. But that happens quite often with experimenting but it’s so much fun to learn new things too.

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    • Thanks Ben! Using a flash really helped with creating the shadows for the photo. I took photos in steps to see what it looked like for each step. The first photo without any water drops, then one with a few water drops, then added more water drops, then added the pool of water for the reflection. I couldn’t think of anything else to add to make it better so stopped at that but I can say it continued to look better with each step.

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  10. Wow. Wonderful technique, very creative image. I like it a lot and am eager to see more of what you do with it. I suppose this challenge is about post-processing, but I live the original image.

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    • Thanks Sarah! Not sure where or how the idea popped into my mind but I took some different photos a few days prior to this one and I had just got them uploaded on the computer and didn’t like any of them. Somewhere between that and getting the shot is where I had the idea but I’m glad that it came to my mind or this photo would have never been created.

      As for the family, everything seems to be going great so far. The baby is only waking up once through the night and doing great with naps during the day. He doesn’t fuss much unless he’s got a dirty diaper or he’s hungry.

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  13. Oh this is gorgeous Justin, in B&W and colour. Do love the B&W though 😉 Love that reflection and the drops 🙂
    I couldn’t wait – I had to go and see Liam – Huge congrats to you and your wife on his arrival. I do hope Mum and baby are both doing well x

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