B&W Challenge No. 54- Togetherness

[alexr]

Happy new year to all on the forum, I hope that you enjoyed any festivities and are looking forward to renewed life and opportunities.
One of my resolutions this year is to put time and effort aside to get back into photography and rekindle my enthusiasm, so I really hope to be engaging more than I have of late (but I know I've said that before and failed), but I wanted to apologise I have been so quiet particularly on the B&W threads where I share duties with Helen and Tony and have been letting them do all the hard work, so take this opportunity to send my thanks to them for doing so.
Thinking about how we want to move forward away from the last couple of years, the first B&W theme of 2022 is about images that show 'togetherness', so maybe where working in mono enables you to focus on a couple of connected subjects in the image, or where it enables you to show the mood of a group; just let your artistic interpretations run wild (I know you will)...
As always, I am fascinated to see what you come up with.
Cheers.

[hmca]

I went to take pictures of the seals at Sandy Hook today. I didn't see any seals but out for the day I did take some pictures of "Togetherness" for this theme.

The first was taken at Sandy Hook as people gathered in hopes of capturing pictures and videos of the seals. There were none to be seen and I wanted my image to kind of reflect this mood of disappointment...in a poster sort of look. Something entirely new for me. I had originally thought of a silhouette.....but did want the cameras and the body language of the viewers to be visible.



Next we went to the beach in town. Seeing this couple and their dog on the bench, I thought it would make a nice B/W.



Finally I saw this family and their dog.

[pontiac1940]

Thank you alexr
looking forward to renewed life and opportunities. And to you as well. 

Walkers in the river valley today, January 2, 2022. 

[billz]

Thanks Alex. This will be a good theme to start the year with.

[tonyw]

Good topic Alex and I had to dig back in the archives for this one that fits the theme - wasn't sure how it would work in black and white but I think it does once cropped to remove some extraneous objects (the swing structure)



Tony

[hmca]

Great interaction in this capture, Tony.

[pontiac1940]

January 3, 2021 in the river valley. Chatted with this lovely young couple and got their permission to take a photo of them walking away. 

[hmca]

Beautiful image, pontiac1940. Love how they stand out against the blurred background.

[pontiac1940]

Jan 4, 2022 2:19:44 GMT hmca said:

Love how they stand out against the blurred background.

Thanks Helen. I have been cheating with bokeh (or at least background softness) lately. This specific photo was shot at ISO 2,000 and there was a titch of noise in the background even though it was mostly OOF. So I captured the couple and foreground using a combination of the auto selection and quick selection wands. Then reversed the selection and reduced the noise in the background. Sometimes I slightly increase the size of the selection (the couple) using "refine edge" and feather before denoising the background. If done properly (whatever that is ) the edge transition looks natural. It can make birds pop. 

The lens has a nice bokeh in most images shot in better light.   

[pontiac1940]

This is an old photo (inspired by tonyw ) that I took in August 2008. It was not staged. Willie (wife) and I were out with our granddaughter, Kate (who is now 20!), and they were walking away from me. I took quite a few photos. 
It is times like this in particular that having digital is a blessing. (Compared to looking through albums and negatives.)  I've taken over 200,000 photos since that day and yet I remembered the photo (after seeing Tony's photo) and it took me about 5 minutes to find it. 
 

[pontiac1940]

Last togetherness photo. Thanks alexr
River valley today, January 3, 2022 

[billz]

A couple dogs out walking their people together this morning. Edited in ACR.



Thanks for the theme Alex!

[alexr]

What a wonderful set of images contributed so far, and I'm so glad it has brought back some happy memories for people.
Great images all, with a range from high key poster art (hmca ) to high speed interaction (tonyw ) via gentle tenderness (pontiac1940 and billz ). I have nothing really to add as the quality speaks for itself.

[alexr]

The first image that I have added to this forum from my phone rather than my 'proper' camera. Fairly zoomed in so lost some clarity. On one of our usual walks today we were initially (and of course utterly incorrectly) 'put out' by finding someone sitting on 'our' bench. But the backlighting gave a nice opportunity I thought.


Telegraph Hill together mono by AlexR!, on Flickr

[tonyw]

Darren & Tabitha - conversion in Silver Efex Pro 3



Tony