Fifty Shades of Grayscale

TwentyTwentyTwo, Week 12

Last Week

Last week you blew me away with your take on Disney and the colour purple, to celebrate and bring Epilepsy Awareness to the forefront. Now this week we are going to tone it down a little while not forgetting March 26th is Epilepsy Awareness day.

This week

Next week marks a milestone for me and I will be reaching half a century on the final day in March. Therefore, in order to celebrate my 50th Birthday, I have opted to combine the number 50 with different shades of grey. The theme is built around various tones of 50 Shades of Grayscale.

No, we are not looking for explicit photographic images related to a particular movie, please keep it clean. But we are going to take inspiration from the characters we already have, using LEGO mini figures or any other type of toys you chose, with a black and white theme.

Let’s get into the Zone

In order to understand how the grayscale works we are first going to look at the old masters of photography. In particular one of the most well-know landscape photographers of all time, Ansel Adams and how he reinvented the grayscale.

Camera histograms suggests there are 256 shades of grey, besides pure black and pure white. Adams used only 9 in his zone system together with black and white. The system Adams used gave him the ability to perfectly control the contrast of black and white photographs. Adams based this rule by exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights.

By no means do I expect you all to become Ansel Adams overnight, and to be honest nowadays, his way of thinking is much different to today’s digital photography. In contrast, the zone-system can still be used, just adapted. Instead of exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights, you will need to expose for the highlights and develop for the shadows.

Deadpool is on his way to the party of the decade

I hope I haven’t blown out your mind and that you are still in the zone?

An Invitation

You are invited and what better way to celebrate is by having a virtual fancy dress masquerade party and get into character. Now last week we went all Disney. And what better way to connect the celebrations as we bring our different characters into the zone.

The Challenge

But wait, remember this is a challenge! So this week’s task you are to create images thinking about the grayscale zone system. You will need to dress up as a character of your choice and you will need to wear a fancy dress to the party especially remembering to wear a mask.

That can be a storm trooper (helmet), or a Deadpool mask. Perhaps you want to go all Spiderman. Or visit Sesame Street and come along as Big Bird, or go all looney tunes. Maybe you want to be a red hot chilli pepper, a bear or a spaceman. Or you are in fact the batman.
You see where I am going?

You may want to arrive at the party in a fancy sports car, or a spaceship. Bring presents or envelopes (containing a card). And yes there will be virtual cake for everyone.

Your final image needs to be visually processed in the varying tones of fifty shades of grey. A grayscale style that contains a variant of a single colour. And don’t worry, I won’t be counting all your individual shades of grey, but you get the idea.