Five monochrome landscape images, taken in the Italian alps.

These were shot using a Leica Q2 Monochrom and various colour-contrast and polarising filters. The Q2M is a monochrome-only compact camera with a fixed 28mm lens which was bought to replace an ageing Ricoh GR for travel where carrying film is no longer practical. The Q2M has the advantage of a built-in EVF, and shooting with the monochrome sensor is essentially the same process as for shooting with black and white film, only without the chemicals.

Compositionally, I found the Q2M quite challenging to use for landscapes. This is partly due to a lack of practice, and partly because the wide focal length and lack of colour discrimination make excluding elements difficult. Skies were particularly difficult as there were frequently complex cloud patterns that added distractions from the foreground scene. Despite intending to use the classic combination of a deep-red filter with a polariser to render the skies black, in practise simply burning out the sky with a brighter exposure was a better option.