Corrugated metal house with three windows
Architecture,  Monochrome Madness,  Photographic techniques,  Themed galleries

Gallery: seeing windows in black and white

May 16, 2024 / 35 Comments

I went window shopping today! I bought four windows.

Tommy Cooper

An old joke, and one more likely to make you groan than laugh, but I couldn’t resist!

And while I may not be in the market for any windows at the moment, that doesn’t stop me acquiring them. However I don’t buy them, I simply take their photo! There’s something about both windows and doors that draws many photographers to capture them, isn’t there? Maybe it’s the intrigue of not knowing what lies within. Or perhaps it’s simply that their geometry is pleasing to the eye.

Old windows, modern windows. Windows with fancy frames, windows with someone looking out, windows which offer a glimpse of what lies inside. The variety is endless; perhaps that’s another reason we’re drawn to them. And for travellers a destination’s distinctive windows can help to tell its story and to shape our memory of the journey.

But we don’t have to stray far from home to find a window. They are all around us, literally, wherever we live (unless in a cave of course!)

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn.

Thomas Hood

When I looked for a good quotation about windows to open this post this one popped up. It’s not the most apposite but I had to include it as this was one of my mother’s favourite poems and she often recited it. And I’m sure the sun must peep into some of the windows in my gallery below!

I’ve taken ‘windows’ as a theme before, but that time I was looking out through the windows, and they were in colour. Today for Dawn’s Monochrome Madness challenge I’ve created black and white edits of some favourite window shots. All were originally taken in colour and edited with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Hover over any photo to see a caption giving the location of the window. Or click on one to open a slideshow of them all. My featured photo was taken in Reykjavik, Iceland.

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35 Comments

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