I don’t know what it looks where you live, but in Chicago, it’s cold enough that everything is dead but not snowy enough to hide it. So let’s lament our environment with good old, pretentious, black and white nature photography.

The official challenge is “Gray Winter.” For fun, let’s all shoot black and white in-camera and try to create most of the image without too heavy a hand in post production. If you nee advice/tips on shooting black and white landscapes, check here.

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the “challenge” part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.

Send your best entries by the end of SUNDAY (yes, we moved the contest days) at contests@gizmodo.com with “Gray Winter” in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email.

Bonus points for extra depressing shots that destroy the hope of happy holidays for everyone.

*Note: we didn’t run last week’s Shooting Challenge (Thanksgiving) because we didn’t receive enough entries. Meanwhile, the week before, we received around 75 shots. We’ll do our best to keep the challenges interesting, but for Giz’s weekly shooting challenge to stay afloat, we really need your free labor, I mean, participation! [Image]