I take better photos in black and white

It's a strange thing to say. But I really do think photos look better in black and white. You can add a mood to them in pretty unexpected ways. I find myself saying I take better photos in black and white.

These are all from Sandringham House (the house itself is the last photo), where the Queen spends her Christmases. They are all plant life pictures that would make more sense being in colour. But I like the way they turned out.

This one below would probably work better in colour. But it's a cool looking flower. And as it's got a pure white look about it against the varying greys makes it stand out better than expected.

There is a lot of open space around Sandringham. This is just long grass but there are no people. And it's quite nice unspoiled.

There is this nice bank of trees that line up quite nicely. I have clearly stolen all my ideas here.

In contrast to the single flower that came out white, above, the near black look of these is quite a nice juxtaposition.

And this is what Sandringham looks like...

A little bit of colour

I prefer taking photos in black and white. I don't know why. I think I can picture the result much better with black and white. And yes, I know it's counter intuitive. I have deferred to black and white film more often than not when choosing from the rolls that I have before me.

Anyway. I live near some pretty interesting National Trust places. They have some nice gardens and what not. I know near enough nothing about plants and horticulture in general. But I have managed to take some decent shots of some colourful gardens.

The following few (six) are all from Oxburgh Hall. You can tell I was trying to be a bit of a poncy artiste in a couple of them.

I just like the orange in the one above. I have been using 400ASA film exclusively up until now. Not sure why, but apparently you get good contrasts. I think this is a good example of that.

Here is my attempt at using a high shutter speed. It was a fairly windy day, and you can kind of see the grass blowing. But I liked that solitary flower in the middle.

There were quite a few different parts of the gardens to take photos of. They mixed all the different colours really well. Good to take a photo of really.

When you walk in to Oxburgh Hall, past the ticket entrance, you get a really nice view of the building with a little garden patch out the front (sort of, it has a moat between the house and gardens). But here (above) you can see the house in the background (again, sort of).

Out of all of them, I tried the hardest on this. It didn't come out how I wanted it to. But it kind of has the right idea. You can see the different rows of colours which I liked.

Much the same as the yellow flower above, the wind was blowing harder in this one and pushed the flower further down when I took the picture. But I'm glad it didn't take it out of focus.