It’s not too often that I dabble in black and white photography, but when I saw this photo I thought it would be a perfect opportunity.
You have to have a different mindset when taking black and white photos. You almost have to train your mind to see in black and white. Black and white obviously can’t show vivid eye-popping colors, so you have to make use of what can be portrayed in a black and white image: textures, contrast, shapes, and composition. In the photo above, the goat stands out because the texture of his fur is different from the background. The goat also has some stronger shadows on his face, which helps with contrast.
I also cropped the photo so the goat was looking into the frame and isn’t the center of attention. The goat looking to the left is an advantage too. Your eyes kind of follow the goat’s gaze to the left side of the photo, and then “read” from left to right back to the goat. It kind of makes viewers dwell on the photo longer than just a passing glance.
I had to crop this photo quite a bit to get this composition (and this was taken with a strong zoom lens), so it’s not a high enough resolution to print, but I wanted to share the story.