It’s that time of year again. The “Mono Awards” are back up and running. An annual Black and White Photograph Competition broken down into 3 categories. People – Places – Animals. The Photo I entered this year has been entered into “Places”. It has some irony to it as it was taken at an art glass exhibition called “Chihuly Nights” that ran in The Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Now you may be looking at my cover photo above and be going “That’s not Black and White!” and you’d be correct. But it is the photo I started with. So Read On!

So before I show you my entry for this years Mono Awards I am going to share some of the colourful exhibits at Chihuly. The one above of the canoe was one of my favourites. But there were many more. It was so colourful.

However before I made my way into the exhibition I took this photo below just at the entrance to the gardens. The lights running down the left hand side caught my attention. It looked interesting. I liked how the lights led down the path and around into the gardens. These lights ended up being our guide around the gardens. So like a lot of photos I like, I converted it to Black and White.

It looked alright when first converted, but it was way too bright! It almost looked liked it was the middle of the day, when it was already well into the evening. So I decided to get to work on it and do some post-processing. It was during this post processing period that I began to think this could be my entry in The Monos!

And after a lot of adjustments to the brightness and tones of the greyscale colours this is the image (below) I settled on. I had got to the point where I had been applying changes and then undoing them, then making some parts of it darker, and other parts lighter, that I just had to stop. I looked at it and was happy! This would be my entry in The Mono Awards!

I have titled it “Path to Colour”. Click on the Image to see an enlarged copy of it if you’re viewing this on your PC. I have also added a link to the official Mono Awards website where I give a brief explanation of the photos story,

https://www.themonoawards.com.au/photocompentry/path-to-colour

Some photos just look better in Black and White, Going back to the cover photo, I like both the colour and B&W versions of this photo. Am I expecting to win the Mono Awards Places category. No I am not. But it may get published in Australian Photography magazine if it finishes in the top 50! There’s only one way to find out and that is to sit back and wait. In the meantime I want to get out there and WANDER – EXPLORE – and DISCOVER more amazing places. I encourage you to do the same!