52 Week Photo Challenge – Week 5: Landscape – Black & White

I did the week 5 photo challenge this week, which was a black and white landscape.  I struggled with this challenge because I’m not feeling landscapes right now.  I find it is hard to get into a landscape mood when it is gray, dreary, and bland outside. That is the problem when winter starts edging towards spring but it isn’t exactly spring yet, all you have is mud, debris, and trash.   Thus, it has hard for me to do landscapes. 

These two landscapes were taken down at the National Harbor, while I was scouting outdoor photo locations for Katsucon.  I took these with a Cannon 70D with an 18 to 200mm lens.  I took the first picture at 32mm with an ISO of 100, at f14 and a 1/200s shutter speed.   As you can see from the original picture it is very bland, but the bridge is a good focal point.  I took the image into Lightroom to crop it, adjust the brightness, clarity, and overall contrast of the image. I then used Lightroom to convert the image from color to black and white. I also add a bit of vingnetting to the image.

Original Image

Final Image

For the second image, I used the harbor with boats and the Capital Wheel as the main focal point of the image.  I also like this image due to the reflection of the ferris wheel on the water.  This image was shot at a focal length of 18mm with an aperture of F20 and a shutter speed of 1/125.  I then pulled the image into Lightroom and did similar adjustments as the first image. 

Original Image

Final Image

I think black and white improves both of these images, since there was very little color to begin with. As I said, I’m having difficulty with the landscape images. I am hoping as the weather improves I’ll get more into taking landscape photos.   Next week is the faceless photo challenge week, which will be interesting since I’ll be at Katsucon doing several portrait shoots of the cosplayers in attendance.