Anne Chandler leads this week’s Lens Artists Challenge and she asks the burning question, “What’s your photographic groove?” (Please visit Anne’s website, Slow Shutter Speed, for her take and those of others).
Grooves? I’ve had more grooves than a 33 RPM album.
I’ve done macro, landscape, reflections, sports, oceans and other assorted bodies of water grooves. There’ve been clouds, bugs, railroads, old barns, broken down cars and brand new skyscrapers.
And now?
Well, now I’m grooving on monochrome, incorporating some of the old passions and adding others, most notably cemeteries – or more accurately, graveyards. For an explanation of the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard, go back two months to one of my previous posts.
I rarely shoot in black and white, preferring instead to shoot in color and then edit into monochrome. A color image can always be converted to black and white but the converse is not possible. As Emeril once said, “You can always add, you can’t take away.” Remember that the next time you have a jar of cayenne pepper in your hand.
Why black and white?
Because it lends itself to some of the moods I’m drawn to; the old, the forgotten, the decrepit, the desolate and the dreary. Yeah, I’m the life of the party. Old Edgar Allen Poe has nothing on me.
Some of the images in this post have appeared in previous posts.
Desolation
A road trip through the American Southwest can deliver you to places lonely and forsaken.
Below: Part of what’s left of the old mining town of Goffs, California in the Mojave Desert.

Goffs, California
Below: In Grants, New Mexico there’s no service at Charlie’s Radiator Service.
Can color properly convey the devastation wrought by a wildfire? Below: During the last leg of a 2021 road trip, we came upon the bleak remains of a forest in Northern California.
Roads
I love road trips and the main ingredient for a road trip is, well, a road – at least one. While a road passing beneath a canopy of autumn blazed trees begs for color, black and white serves a good road well, and a bad road even better. Continue reading