Pure Boy Joy

[Thos Quinn]

I’d like to say I planned this as a B&W from the get go but I’d be fibbing. I can take credit for seeing the dramatic lighting as my son Forest was playing on his rope swing in the late afternoon/early evening. I got a few “OK” shots but the background was just too busy for my taste and I couldn’t get a fast enough shutter to really get a sharp image. After a while, Forest stopped swinging and started a sword fight with the rope (hitting it with a long stick). You could just see his 9-year-old imagination going! Anyway, when I took this shot, he had just hit the rope so hard that it swung all the way over the branch it is tied to. For some reason this just cracked him up. I love the look of pure joy on his face and converting to B&W helped focus on him and not the background. I originally tried darkening and blurring the background but the contrasting colors were still distracting. Comments/criticism welcome.
D70, kit lens; 1/180 sec, f4.5, 56mm; PSCS channel mixer monochrome

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[greyflash]

I like it Thos. The close crop adds to the image. Well done.

 

[Thos Quinn]

Thanks Gordon. As you noticed (and I failed to mention), I pretty severely cropped this image. Once I decided to go B&W, I cropped to get the framing I found worked and then worried about pizel etc. issues. At first I was concerned about the "grain" but upon reflection I realized it brought fond memories of my good old days when I used to push Kodak TriX and get a similar effect. All-in-all, I guess this is a shot that means more to the father than the general viewing audience.