Have you heard about this fun exercise on Facebook?
It’s called the 5 Day Black and White Photo Challenge
Here are some of the links:
(hashtag) #5dayblackandwhitechallenge or
(usernames) @5dayblackandwhitechallenge.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/448932725245612/
Think of it as a “visual chain letter”! I saw it on the status thread the first week of November, 2014 from a great NY photographer colleague I know, Marty Umans http://www.martyumans.com/ .
The challenge: to post a black & white photo each day for 5 days, and then nominate someone per day as well.
Coincidentally, on November 13th, I was nominated by my former dance teacher, Niki Simon Blacker, https://www.facebook.com/niki.s.blacker?fref=ts who takes extraordinary photos many days of the week in South Beach, Miami.
I decided to take the plunge and it was indeed fun scouring through photos galore to see which ones would be the best to include. I decided that it would also be fun to add these 5 B & W’s to my blog www.sjfcommunications.com, so you shall be staring at them in my post here!
My photos were all originally snapped in color taken with my Nikon Coolpix (either L830 http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/l/l830/ or L820 http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/l/l820/ ) this past year or so. I converted them to black and white in Picasa for this particular 5 Day B & W Photo Challenge.
I was thrilled to nominate five really cool photographers that I know. Here they are (with tidbits about how we know each other)!
Day 1: (Ken Jacques http://www.kjphotography.com/ (who I know professionally as our photographer for San Diego Musical Theatre and many other Theatre groups as well as his other phenomenal photography in and out of the San Diego area)
Day 2: Eileen Swanson https://www.facebook.com/eileen.m.swanson (a fellow Channel 10 Weather Watcher, we’re both in the Weather Watcher “closed” Facebook group and the station shows photos from this group often on the air)
Day 3: Sonny Porticio (Captured Vision Photography) https://www.facebook.com/capturedvisionphoto?pnref=about.overview
Day 4: Jennie Slosarik (family friend, pseudo-cousin, and aspiring (already award-winning high school student), (need to get a link to her photos)
and finally:
Day 5: Josh Freeman http://ObeyMyBrain.etsy.com http://obeymybrain.com (Josh is just so creative…he makes these one of a kind hats too! We shared the stage together in THE CRUCIBLE a few years ago).
The perspective really changes when a photo is in Black & White!
Good luck everyone. Try it! Take a gander and enjoy!
SJF Communications and the 5 Day Black and White Photo Challenge!

I like that it shows so much variety of nature…the beach, the rocks and of course the sky.

I hope you all like this photo I took a while ago of several palm trees and clouds which I edited in B & W on Picasa. I like how it shows the trees at attention! I

I hope you all like this photo I took a while ago of several pelicans and their friends in La Jolla which I edited in B & W on Picasa. I like that it shows them all mingling & lounging and love the curve of the rock!

The osprey was magically perched atop a rock. I used my zoom from my NIKON Coolpix L830 and edited in B & W in Picasa. He (or she)? was holding prey (which I will not show here…). I like that I captured the osprey at an opportune moment in time, serendipitously as I looked up at the beautiful rock formation!

I’m always in awe of hot air balloons, which we see frequently in North County of San Diego. This one touched down before my eyes.