I take the same walk in my neighborhood nearly every week — sometimes more often if time and weather permits.  At the end of our quiet street we are fortunate to have a path into an Audubon wildlife sanctuary which leads to ocean, fields, farms, and woods.  I’ve wandered here in every season and at every time of day.   Sometimes the walk is for exercise, sometimes for relaxation and contemplation.

I often bring my Canon DSLR and several lenses, but when walking for exercise I don’t want to be bogged down with extra equipment.  So my iPhone always goes with me, rain or shine.

My iPhone both frees me and limits me to a certain extent.  I don’t have the same options to play with depth of field, zoom way in or out,  or get a super wide angle shot.  But I’ve found other ways to challenge myself and see my surroundings in a new way.

On this particular day I used the iPhone 6’s native camera app and set the color to “Noir” which is a high contrast black and white.  I don’t shoot in black and white very often and this grey day gave me an opportunity to play.  Because I was supposedly out there for exercise, and because rain was threatening, I quickly shot the scenes that caught my eye and would be striking in high contrast mode.

I resisted the urge to check my images as I shot them.  I re-envisioned these familiar views with an eye towards simply seeing light and dark, hoping that the contrast would come through.

The results pleased me enough to want to try this again on a future walk.  Do you walk the same roads or trails often?  What do you do to see things in a new way?

I am so excited to be joining the ladies of Viewfinders as a regular contributor.  I’ve worked with many of them in the past on the Mortal Muses blog, and follow most of them on Instagram, flickr and Facebook.  I’m looking forward to getting to know all of them — and you — in the months ahead.

—lucy