Another B&W

Last night I was looking through some old photos from 3 years ago. This one was shot into the sun and the combination of the mist and strong back light did bad things to the color. Ansel Adams used to talk about "pre-visualizing" an image, the notion that you had a concept of the final image in your mind before you trip the shutter. As a general rule I have to be thinking in black and white when I want to shoot black and white. It is a bit hard to explain to a non-photographer but I tend to view scenes in terms of the medium I am working in. Artists in general tend to do this. For example I found when I was working in pastel, I saw scenes as pastels.

I shot the above photo on a bright autumn morning when I was looking for fall color images. It was a failure in that regard, the light killing and/or distorting the color. Some photographers might have trashed it as a failed photo but I'm a bit of a packrat so it stayed in my archive until I looked at it last night and 're-visualized' it minus the intentions and expectations that had previously lead me to miss what was really there.

Addendum: Today I spent some more time with the photos from that chilly morning three years ago. I'm not sure why I hadn't done anything with the one below before. I had flagged it to work on but for some reason didn't get around to it at the time. This one I like in color.