Black and White and Wet All Over

I've been meaning to do a little more work with black and white photographs, and keep not getting around to it. I realize that I can just take regular photos and make them black and white in the photo editor, but I wanted to put a little bit of thought into it, and look at things while thinking, "How would this look in black and white?" I figured the exercise would make me think more about contrast and shadows, and maybe help make me a better photographer. I'll probably still be 95% point and click, but maybe we can develop a little skill in that other five percent.

One of the few plans I had for the weekend was to find a spot to go walk around and work on this, and it just kept not happening for various reasons. People are sick and needed to be checked on, people don't have cars and need errands run, I have all my regular weekend stuff, etc. so last night when I went to bed I said I would set my alarm, get up early, and go. When I woke up, it was raining. I went anyway, damn it.

I think the rain worked to my advantage, actually. It gave the sky a uniform lightness that completely washes out in the pictures:









It gives a sense that these buildings could kind of be anywhere, and it also gave everything indirect lighting. I was thinking about shadows, but there weren't any.

The rain also gave shine to things that otherwise would not be shiny:





I probably wouldn't have taken a picture of the basketball court at all if it hadn't had the reflection, so I think the rain made things at least a little more interesting.

I took these pictures out at our off campus apartment complex, which is officially closed today. The last people, who had exceptions to stay late, will be moving out in a month, and then the buildings will be torn down to make way for new athletic fields. Because of that, the whole complex has a sense of emptiness and abandonment now, and there are a lot of signs of departure:













It's weird to think that within a year or two, everything in these pictures will be gone. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with how the pictures turned out.