Photography Prompt: Monochrome

Week of 2025-04-05 to 2025-04-11

Apr 05, 2025

The photography prompt this week is: Monochrome

Create and share photos inspired by this week's prompt on your Aminus3 website, Substack Notes, or linked in the comments on this post.

Substack community can tag

Aminus3 Photography

in your posts.

Those of you posting on the Aminus3 community, add tag: #am3-prompt-202515

Be Inspired and Learn Something New

While external events in the world polarize our thoughts into extremes of pure black or white, we still have the ability to appreciate the subtle shades of gray in between.

Much of photography is about balance.

The way that you arrange your subjects in the frame makes all the difference between a stellar photo and another “dud”, slated for digital dust.

Like life, the balance point in every image, every scene, is highly contextual, and depends on many nuanced factors to see how they all fit together.

Finding that balance becomes increasingly more challenging when we are bombarded with an overload of information.

The key then is simplification.

This is one of the appeals of black and white, or, monochrome photography.

When we remove color, we can focus on forms. shapes, patterns, and contrast.

If you are shooting digital, especially with an electronic preview, see if your camera has a dedicated monochrome mode so you can envision the final image in the viewfinder at the moment that you create the photo.

This is something I like to do on photo walks or when I’m looking for a creative constraint to change the way I see things.

By switching over to monochrome mode, I have created images that I would not have been able to visualize otherwise.

Whether you create your monochrome images in-camera, or in a photo editor, get out this week and find that sweet-spot balancing point where all of your subjects come together to create something divine.

Like these weekly photo prompts? Did you know this is our 104th photo prompt on Substack! That is over two years of weekly prompts to educate and inspire. You can help support the time and considerate curation that goes into these prompts through a “Buy me a Coffee” donation.

Tip Jar

Last Week’s Prompt Photos for “Circular”

The Circular prompt was a fun opportunity to go a little more multi-dimensional in the images shared. Not only illustrating subjects made up of circular shapes, but also images that also featured cycles and circular concepts.

For example, as

Stuart H

write about his photo of these circular clay kimchi pots :

“Kimchi holds a deep cultural significance to the Korean people - each season has a different cycle of production (fresh in the spring, cool water in the summer, long term storage prep in the fall, and finally aged in the winter).”

There were also many visually stunning circles shared all week, a few of which are highlighted below. You are of course encouraged to check out the links below the photos to see the rest.

Since our next theme for the week is monochrome, I will leave you with a nice burst of many colors to enjoy for your weekend.