I haven't done much black and white photography. But that changed thanks to this month's photo blogging challenge. I switched my digital camera to monotone mode; that camera processee the jpg files in black and white while leaving me with full colour RAW files for blogging, tweeting, etc. The other result from changing the picture mode to monotone is that everything seen through the EVF and on the LCD screen is in black and white. That really helped me focus on shape, form, lines, patterns, textures and other sources of tonal contrast - elements of composition that become particularly important when colour isn't part of the equation. The biggest thing I learned by doing this is that viewing a composition in black and white makes for stronger compositions; I think I'll use this mode on a semi-regular basis.