At the NMC summer conference I participated in the photo safari. On the second day, a chance statement by Nil Santana changed how I took pictures for the rest of the week. He mentioned that he set his LCD preview to black and white (or something like that). It wasn’t a request that we do it. It didn’t even feel overt. He was just reflecting aloud on his practice. So I fumbled around and figured out how to set my preview style to monochrome (not realizing that this actually changes your pictures as well unless you shoot in RAW). I shot the rest of the week this way and switched back to RAW as well. I think it made a fairly significant difference. It was interesting to see how the restriction on (instant) feedback/reflection changed my pictures. I tended to focus a lot more on the overall composition of the image and I think ended up with stronger pictures even when I opted to leave the pictures in color. That seems to be echoed by the fact that I had my first image in Flickr explore in quite some time.

I liked how the window bar works almost like one of those black bars to hide someone’s identity. He initially posed with his eyes rolled back in his head. The sign said NEED BEER so I think I needed to better explain the purpose of the photo. It bothers me to think he might have seen this as something meant to ridicule him. Trees and the old brick of the buildings here continue to interest me. I’m also still interested in your lonely pets.