*This year I am participating personal project with a group of amazing photographers. We created a blog circle where we challenge ourselves creatively and technically throughout 2018. Life From This Lens is a fascinating look at how a group of photographers around the country interpret the same prompt (or theme) each month. Please follow along in the circle and see everyone’s take on the theme each month*

The theme for our March Life From This Lens project was black and white. Back in the day, when I first learned photography in high school, I only shot black and white film. On my dads old Pentax. And I walked to school in a snow storm, up hill, both ways. HA! Ok not really, but we did get some gnarly snowstorms back then. Our darkroom was only set up to process black and white film so that was what we did. And I loved it. I claimed I would NEVER shoot anything other than black and white film. Same in college. And then my photography life took a hiatus and when I picked it up again digital cameras were all the rage and I don’t think I even thought twice about black and white images. I fell in love with color.

Even now I prefer almost all of my images in color. BUT! That is only because black and white images are so…well…sacred…to me. I only convert a certain type of image to black and white. Clients might get 10 black and white images in a gallery or they might just get one, it totally depends on if I think any of the images lend themselves to be converted to black and white. Well, it turns out I can also be easily influenced to go back to only black and white images. At the suggestion of my friend Kelly, for this months challenge I shot using the monochrome setting on my camera. The LCD shows your images in black and white, but on the memory card it records the color version. Here’s the thing – once I saw the images in black and white (as in, shot them with that challenge in mind and first saw them on the LCD screen as black and white) I couldn’t “unsee” them in black and white. When they loaded into Lightroom as color images I cringed. I actually didn’t like any of them. Once I edited them to be black and white again I fell in love with them all over again.

This was a great exercise for me this month and I highly recommend the challenge of shooting in black and white for a month or so. It really helps you see light in a different way. I still feel very particular and specific about which images I convert to black and white, but this challenge helped me expand that criteria just a little bit.

Please follow along in our blog circle and head over to Jessica’s post on Black and White images.