Black and white landscape photography inspiration from Bill Allen

“My love of photography started in March 1982 when I purchased my first camera, a Pentax M E Super 35mm film camera, and assorted lenses. In May 1995, I made the move to Canon and purchased an EOS 5 and later that year I enrolled in a city & guilds photography course at the Brighton Polytechnic of Art & Design, working with film, covering everything from studio lighting to developing and printing and darkroom techniques. In August 1996 I passed with distinction. December 2006, my gear of choice changes to Nikon starting with the D80, then in December 2009 upgrading to the D300s.

I’d guess 95% of my images you see are monochrome, however favoring black & white as my main medium was not a conscious decision I made, but one I seemed to have gravitated towards since my days of working with film.

I feel black & white tends not to distract from the context of the scene and allows me to focus and give attention to the composition, lighting, and perspective of the image.

I also tend not to crop my images very much, again this goes back to film when my image composition was done mostly in camera.

Another area of photography I’m passionate about is long exposure imaging, using shutter speeds of 60 seconds or more by means of neutral density filters. There’s something about the way moving water becomes luminescent and almost stone like, and clouds trace their tracks across the sky following the direction of the wind that I find fascinating.

It’s not important to capture something interesting, it’s important to do it in an interesting way.” ~ Bill Allen

For more black and white landscape photography inspiration from Bill Allen, please visit his website here or check out his flickr photostream right here.