100 Days of Black and White Photos: Day 1

I know my day one photo is more on the sucky side. I decided this morning to do the challenge and didn't give myself much time to think about my subject matter. I have a feeling this will be a common thing before I get used to seeing things that will make great black and white photos.

Week 2 - 4

So I've managed to take photos each week but failed to upload them during the week they belong too. Along as the photo was taken during the correct time period, it still counts. Below are photo from week 2, 3 and 4. Click on the photos to read the story behind each photo.


Craftsmanship (week 2)


Water Water Everywhere (week 3)


Masala Dosa (week 4)

My Phone Sucks at Taking Black and White Photos

I learned tonight that my phone's native camera can not take black and white photos. I have three other camera apps and they pretty much suck at black and white too.

FxCamera will only allow me to take photos no bigger than 720 x 480. Vignette demo has 4 or 5 different black and white settings. Some are better than others depending on the lighting. The app keeps defaulting back to .3MP instead of the 5MP I set it to the last time I used the app (I just noticed is not available in demo version). Retro Camera has 5 different cameras but only 4 can do black and white. Each of them puts spots or scratches in the photo to make them look old. Only one of them is some what decent, the Fudgecam but it adds a vignette around the photo. So I don't know if I can do this black and white challenge if my phone is shitty at it.
I think these two photos are the only ones that came out okay-ish:

At least it gives me pure black and white and not a lot of gray values, but I did take photos at night. Some of the photos Vignette took were only 318 wide and 13kb ...???? Over all, I think Retro Camera might be my best bet for black and white photos, even if it add spots, scratches and borders. Maybe I need to do another test when it isn't so cold outside.

I also took a lot of video footage of the Highline. I'll trying to make something of it. I'm sure most of it is unusable because it was dark, my hands were cold and I was trying to get footage before the park closed.