A Sunday at the Abbey in Black and White

Hello Hivers and everyone dropping by!

Last Sunday we headed out to the Abbey of the Transfiguration in Bukidnon for a family day. I had my mobile phone with me and shot everything in color like I normally do but when I got home and started going through the photos in Adobe Lightroom, I decided to convert them all to black and white just to see how they would look. Glad I did. The place just feels different without color. Quieter somehow,The editing was nothing complicated. I pulled the color out, tweaked the contrast and shadows a little, and let whatever light was already in the shot do the work. That's pretty much it.

I took shots at home first. We have this big old tree in the yard that I keep coming back to the trunk splits in a way that always catches the light differently. The potted plants along the wall have been slowly taking over. My wife's collection keeps growing.

We passed this parking area with two huge bonsai trees in concrete trays sitting right next to the vehicles. I had to stop. They looked like they had been there forever trunks all twisted, not bothered at all by the pickup trucks beside them. The black and white conversion made the bark texture really come out. Shot them from both sides.

The chapel is hard to get tired of photographing. That pyramid shape looks different depending on where you stand and what the sky is doing. That afternoon the clouds were heavy and dark on one side and bright on the other which is exactly what you want when you're planning to convert to black and white. The tones just fall into place.

I walked around the parking lot, crossed the field, crouched near the base probably took more frames than I needed. In Lightroom I brought up the highlights on the roof and pushed the shadows down on the cloud edges. Simple adjustments.

The kids had zero interest in the architecture. They found a rope somewhere and spent most of the afternoon playing tug-of-war and chasing each other across the grass. I just followed them around with the camera. Shooting in color first actually helped here, I could expose for their skin tones and then control how light or dark they came out in the conversion. Some of my favorite shots from the day are just them doing their thing in front of the chapel without knowing I was shooting.

We stayed longer than we planned. That happens every time at the abbey. Nobody really wants to be the one to say let's go. All photos shot in color on a smartphone and converted to black and white in Adobe Lightroom. No presets — everything adjusted manually per photo.

If you're in Bukidnon and haven't been to the abbey, just go. Bring the kids. Let them run. Take too many photos.

Thanks for reading.