When I saw this arrangement near the Itsukushima shrine, it looked to me like a quintessential, traditional Japanese design. We have the character filled and highly trained pine tree, a stone lantern and a classic vermilion colored architectural structure. I think all three of the elements balance nicely.

I shot this with the Olympus PEN-F in black and white JPEG and RAW mode. And, here’s a picture, just to prove that don’t exclusively use the black and white from my PEN-F. The truth is, I don’t remember if I saw the color, when I framed the shot. I use the EVF and LCD set to monochrome, most of the time, when shooting with this camera. I think the lack of color may improve my composition.

With the brilliantly contrasting colors, a pure monochrome image lost out in this case. I even applied my usual black and white post processing, just to make sure — the ample details become a jumbled and distracting mess. Perhaps if the pine tree stood alone, with a simple background, it might be more conducive to the monochrome treatment. Shooting in both JPEG and RAW gives a delightful flexibility.