- A gray cat slinks past a wooden house. There’s something a little intimidating attempting to describe.
Recently, during one of my photographic outings, I picked up that same camera again, although by then it had already become my backup camera. My initial intention was quite simple: to spend some time exploring and scouting new locations in the area where I live, looking for landscapes, viewpoints and compositions that might be interesting for future projects.
The weather conditions, however, were not particularly favourable for the kind of photography I usually pursue. The sky, the light and the overall atmosphere were not offering the conditions I would normally look for when going out with my camera. Instead of seeing this as a limitation, I decided to treat it as an opportunity to experiment.
That was when I decided to return to black and white photography, this time using a digital camera. I wanted to discover how much of the feeling and character that had originally attracted me to black and white film could still be achieved digitally. Rather than simply converting colour photographs into monochrome images, I was interested in exploring how the absence of colour could change the way a landscape is perceived — bringing greater attention to texture, contrast, shape and, above all, atmosphere.
The results surprised me.
Here are some photos from this scouting trip.
What started out as a simple scouting trip became an unexpected photographic experiment. I found a visual language in these images that I had not anticipated discovering that day. Black and white revealed another dimension of these places, making some of the landscapes feel more graphic, quieter and, in a way, more timeless.
The experience reminded me that black and white still has an important place in the way I see and photograph the landscape. Perhaps it is a different relationship from the one I had when I first started, many years ago, with rolls of 35mm film, but it carries the same ability to transform what I see into something more personal and contemplative.
In the end, this outing became much more than a simple scouting session. It was also a small journey back to my photographic beginnings — and an opportunity to rediscover new possibilities within a visual language that, although it had been dormant for many years, still has the power to spark my curiosity
