Theme Thursday: Black & White

I love making pictures black and white and playing with the contrast.  I'm sure there is all sorts of technique behind purposefully taking a black and white picture, and maybe someday I'll learn some of it.  But for now I'll just enjoy the ease of editing in Picasa, and marvel at all the amazing photographers converging on Clan Donaldson.

First: old picture--taken on a retreat in college; if I remember correctly, I was using my sister's camera and it actually had a b&w setting (along with sepia and something blue)

New picture: self portrait, because I always love those (when they turn out; they are sometimes hilarious and sometimes boring when they don't) and because Alex and I don't have nearly enough recent pictures of the two of us; taken with the outdoors (landscape?) setting on my Fujifilm Finepix and magicked in Picasa