Sometimes, you just have to see life in black and white.  Most of the time, there are myriad colors all around you, so you can get jaded.  I am in no way any kind of professional photographer, and these days most of the pictures I take are with my iPhone.  So the pictures for this week’s challenge were all originally in color.  To make them black-and-white, I just used the simple editing tools in Apple’s Photo software.  The first step, obviously, is choosing which photos to convert.  Since I’m a picture-taking fool with my phone, I had lots to choose from!

Yesterday, Hubby and I got in the car and drove and sailed over to the Olympic Peninsula, to go to the beach at the Dungeness Spit National Wildlife Refuge (you take roads, and a Washington State Ferry).  Stay tuned for a big post on that trip.  In any case, I found a picture of a driftwood log on the beach, and concentrated on one end, which was the root system of the tree.  I cropped it, and used the Noir filter, which made it very contrasty. I think the black-and-white version beats the color version!

I have always liked the disused hydroelectric dam along the Wenatchee River just west of Leavenworth, and we always stop there on our way to town.  For this one, I simply converted from color to black-and-white with no other adjustments.

In my backyard, I have some ornamental grasses which are a striped green-and-white.  Here’s one in black-and-white.

And at our local outlet mall, I took a bunch of pictures for my “clouds” album.  I just pointed the camera up at the sky.  I actually liked the parts of buildings and the light-pole that contrasted with the white clouds against the blue sky.

When we went to Tumwater Falls Park in Olympia, beside the existing falls there were some rocks that had obviously been drilled-into to build the old hydroelectric plant.  This one very round hole had filled with tiny pebbles, carried by the falls when it was higher; and a little plant grew in it.  I thought it looked very Japanese-gardenish.

When we went to Deception Pass State Park a couple of weeks ago, the water was crashing onto a big rocky outcropping, which separated the main park beach from another beach.  With the sun low in the sky, the lighting was just perfect.

And last, but not least, I just had to find a picture of our kitty.  She is already black, and sleeping on the white mattress-pad on our bed.

This challenge was great fun, as I had not done too many black and white conversions of existing photos.  Thanks loads to Anne for thinking of this for the week!

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