Tried many variations while photographing - different angles and focal lengths - needed to get a high contrast image to bring out the detail. Exposed this one by a stop over the meter and it looks good to me in B&W. The color version does not show the detail as much because of the low contrast between adjoining color tones.... interesting.

BTW, I changed the WB in ACR to tungsten and let everything go pretty much blue in the NEF file - and then convert the image to B&W in PSCS3 using a combo of Channel Mixer, Color Balance and Selective Color adjustment layers. Because of changing WB to tungsten, somehow the whites and blacks separate better...

3/30/08 Update on SoFoBoMo
Reading Paul Lester's post on his warm-up-book test for SoFoBoMo, I tried out Scribus this morning. Hey! This is better than simply exporting JPGs from PSCS to a PDF.  Thanks Paul! I now just need to figure out the book size, layout and final image sizes so I do not have to fiddle with the settings at the last moment.

A sudden rain shower with the sun shining from behind and scattering light through the fat water drops hanging from the railing. I'd shot a dozen frames or so, and had taken the card out to transfer the images to a hard-drive when 2 Sunbirds came to suck up water droplets from the foliage... the spare cards were in a case in the other room and by the time I got the card out of the reader and back into the camera the birds were gone. Anyway, I did get the water diamonds.

Had planned 2 photo themes earlier, but both would have had to be «local» to a specific location. That's history now.

I'll now be shooting 2 themes consecutively - one will be based on shadows/reflections/silhouettes and the other is a specific street-based idea... details follow once I get started! These 2 give me the flexibility I need because of traveling part of the time during the SoFoBoMo dates I selected.

The photo at left is of a potted flowering Kari Patta [curry leaves] plant that lives on our balcony along with Basil, Oregano and other herb and spice plants.... the Kari Patta flowers are fragrant like the leaves and give off a nice spicy aroma during these hot and sultry evenings. Apparently, the seeds of this plant are poisonous!