On Friday this week my old Pal Helen down in Biggleswade challenged me to take part in a Facebook photography challenge that’s doing the rounds – ‘Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people and no explanations’. These type of challenges happen a lot, and I don’t usually bother, but I liked the cut of this one’s gib as black and white photography is not my thing ~ gimme colour! and lots of it! 🙂 . But I remember my black and white month last February in my 366 was really enjoyable for me, and so decided to join in this time. It’s got me thinking, it isn’t that easy to find something about ‘your life’ to photograph. Most of life, for me at least is about the mundane, getting up, washing, going to work, eating stuff, doing the laundry. Of course exciting things happen, holidays, mince & mash dinner, meeting friends, going out with my camera, but mostly it’s everyday mundanity.
I looked up the definition of mundane/mundanity, and got some examples “Superman hid his heroic feats by posing as his mundane alter ego, Clark Kent.” Mundane, from the Latin word mundus, “world,” originally referred to things on earth. (from dictionary.com) Well I’m no superman but that sounded quite exciting! ‘Any company that advertises itself as ‘fun’ is simply making a desperate and futile attempt to distract attention away from the soul-destroying mundanity that is the reality of its day-to-day life.’ (Oxford English dictionary) and that sounds quite depressing! So I’m going with Miriam Webster’s definition~ dull and ordinary. : relating to ordinary life on earth rather than to spiritual things. Once the 7 day challenge is over on faceache, I’m going to carry on, and am calling it my ‘Mundanity Project’. I think that fits in with Monday Miscellany quite nicely. I’m not sure how long the project will be, I’m leaving it open ended, but will take a photo each day until I don’t want to do it anymore.
Here’s this Mondays collection
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Black and white photography is a whole different ball game than colour, your mind has to think in a different way when composing, and lighting, and choosing the right subject too. Hopefully I will improve as I go on!
laters gaters 🙂
Fraggle's Otherverse 
I used to have a slow-cooker. Haven’t seen one in years. In the 1970s, they were one of the favourte wedding presents. Ours was Cream and brown, very 70s colours.
These worked for me. I do ‘mundane’ all the time…
Best wishes, Pete.
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Slow cookers have had something of a resurgence, I use mine a fair bit and there’s recipes galore for them now. Cheers Pete. ( am sure I remember you getting pickled and falling into your neighbours garden recently – not the most mundane thing really! 😂 )
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Still a rebel in there somewhere… 🙂
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Having had a slow cooker for many years, gathering dust, I was pleased when it turned out that Gosia could use it to make soaps 🙂 I don’t think I would use it for a stew now, although I guess it must be clean 🙂
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Haha good use of available resources 🙂
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Autocorrects are always trying to spell my surname as Mundane. They have the same root, so it’s fair enough. One day I’m just not going to notice, though.
Black and white photography is underrated. I’m intrigued by the photograph of the orchids, because it’s usually their colour that makes them good subjects. They have a very sensual shape, though. I like the contrast with the black background.
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Thanks April, 🙂
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I like this – looking forward to seeing where you take it!
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Me too! Cheers Sarah
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Things always seem a little less mundane in black and white.
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I hope so Jay 🙂
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My dad was a professional photographer and a lot of his pictures were in black and white. I’ve always liked them because I tend to see more details than I do in color. But that’s just me.😊
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Yes I think you look harder for B&W if you. know what I mean. Cheers Kim. x
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