30 Days with the Leica M10 Monochrom: Day 15
Two things to talk about in this post:
- Abstraction
- This camera’s #tones
I mentioned abstraction a few times early in this series when I was talking about why I’m drawn to black and white as a format. This image is a perfect example of why. When you strip away the color from this scene, the eye is immediately drawn to the upside down reflection of the dark tree branch against the bright sky. Light, contrast, and form. It’s a distillation of the art of photography, and it feels pure.
Now that I’ve talked about purity, let’s talk about these hashtag tones, bro! But jokes about the absurdity of Instagram comments aside, this camera produces absolutely gorgeous tonality in the greys. And the shadows too, for that matter. Even though my style of editing is generally based on very high contrast, that doesn’t mean that the greys are unimportant…it actually enhances their role in the image. If an image is primarily black and white with a few greys, those greys have to be perfect or else they’ll be an out-of-place eyesore. This isn’t one of my typical high contrast images, but if you focus on the tree bark it’ll be readily apparent how important the greys are in a black and white image… They just give so much texture and life to this image! It’s certainly possible to achieve well-balanced greys with other cameras, but I’m always surprised with how naturally they pop when I shoot with the M10M.
kyle wurtz 