52 Week Challenge: Week 32

WEEK 32: Landscape: Colorful – Shoot a landscape that packs as much color as you can find into the scene.

This was an interesting challenge. I haven’t had the chance to get out this weekend so I went through some of my recent images to see which would provide the most colorful compositions. In the end I have settled for this mixture of landscape and sort-of street scene that I took at the beach in Mahabalipuram, in Tamil Nadu Province, India a few months back. The beach activities don’t really start up until much later in the day but even so the place is full of bright color.

160905_52WK32_ColorfulLandscape

~Richard

September 5, 2016 2

52 Week Challenge: Week 31

WEEK 31: Portrait: Street Candid – Candids on the street, show us life in your town through the lens.

OK, it’s not my town, but it is my side of the country at least, and quite nearby. I took this on a recent trip to NYC. A particularly muscular looking chap was using the reflective properties of a storefront to help his extremely strenuous workout with a resistance band. How ironic that he was stood next to a parasol advertising 100% beef…

~Richard

September 4, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: WEEK 30

WEEK 30: Artistic: Patterns – Get inspired by the rhythm that patterns bring to your images.

I cannot believe I am back to playing catch up yet again for this challenge! I really haven’t been all that focused (pun intended!) with all the hectic activities of summer. This image does not so much show a repeating pattern but the “pattern” of chaos as the universe descends to entropy…

~Richard

September 3, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 29

WEEK 29: Landscape: Waterscape – Ocean, lake, river, pond, or puddle. Make water the primary subject of this landscape.

I am still using my recent trip to New England to play catch up with the dogwood 52 week challenge. For this one I popped up to the top of Scargo Tower in Dennis, Massachusetts and stitched 5 images together to get a panorama of Lake Scargo, one of the deepest lakes in Cape Cod.

Legend has it that the lake was created by a Native American princess of the same name in order to keep fish that been given to her by a suitor from another tribe. He gave her the fish in a gourd and said he would return but the water dried up so they needed a new home. In one version the lake is filled with Scargo’s tears and in another she drowns in the lake.

Either way the vaguely fish-shaped lake was blessed to be always well stocked for good fishing, although not being a fisherman I cannot verify this!

160802_52WK29_Water ~Richard

August 2, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 28

WEEK 28: Portrait: Family – Whether it’s the family you are born with or the one you choose, show the world what family is to you.

This was always going to be a difficult portrait given my family’s general dislike of being photographed. However, our recent trip to New England afforded me a genuine opportunity for the dreaded “family portrait.” I ran off a quick set of shots but I love the informal nature of the very first one I took, outside The Verb hotel, as we were planning to leave.

160730_52WK28_Family

~Richard

July 30, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 20

WEEK 20: Landscape: Nightowl – A tripod is going to be handy this week… time to shoot a night landscape. Look for some light for the scene! Car lights, city lights, or maybe just moonlight.

I finally got around to this challenge several weeks later than I had planned and, as is often the case, it was a spur of the moment shoot last night. We were staying in the heart of the historic town of Salem, Massachusetts and opposite the hotel was a wonderful outdoor sculpture made of beech twigs called “Stickwork” by Patrick Dougherty. This is a spectacular organic artwork in the form of a set of two storey high “houses”. They are very eerie looking, and seem to be wailing at the world, in my opinion; a fitting comment on their location in the heart of the infamous witch trials of 1692. I took several photographs but it was when we were on a walking night tour of the city that I thought this would make an interesting “nightowl” (or even night howl) image.

160728_52WK20_NightOwl

~Richard

July 28, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 27

WEEK 27: Artistic: Blue – You were inspired by the fiery red earlier, now be inspired by calming blue.

Any fans of Black Adder may recall the famous alchemy scene in which Lord Percy creates his vision or “gold” but is soon brought down to Earth by Black Adder. Well, fellow readers, as tribute I present to you a “’nugget’ of finest blue.” 🙂

160724_52WK27_Blue

~Richard

July 24, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 23

WEEK 23: Landscape: Weather – This week should be as unpredictable as the weather! Feature the weather in this week’s landscape.

How difficult can this be, fer cryin’ out loud? I am still British (as well as American) so I should have a genetic predisposition to evaluating the weather for hours on end. After all, my homeland is famously described as a country that “doesn’t have a climate, only weather.”

However, this may be one of those instances when too much interest is a bad thing, since my desire for an interesting shot of our summer weather in Pennsylvania has resulted in nothing but procrastination and delay on this assignment for weeks on end.

I may have mentioned previously that I usually keep at least one camera in the car with me so, as there were storm clouds rolling in on my drive to work, I stopped off and decided to get a shot of those to support the rather surprising statistic that July is our wettest month here.

As I picked up my camera I thought I’d make the shot more interesting by creating a high dynamic range (HDR) image to bring out the clouds. This entails taking 3 identical shots with slightly different exposure settings (+/- 0.3EV) to bring out the highlights and shadows and then merging them into one image. The resulting image is technically a low dynamic range representation of the HDR composition following tonemapping, but we still call them HDR photos. Anyway, using the portable version of the superb free software LuminanceHDR I created the following image of clouds rumbling in over the trees and the communication antenna tower near to where I work.

If you’d like to see some more of my HDR work click the image above or here.

~Richard

July 14, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 21

WEEK 21: Artistic: Fantasy – Is this real life, or is this just fantasy… Your artistic inspiration this week is fantasy.

Ok, this is a bit of a cheat, as I made this last year, but it fits in with the remit and I am still playing catch up, so I feel justified in my actions.

This is a composite of two photographs, one from Bermuda at the aquarium and the other at Philadelphia zoo. After a bit of playing around in my favorite free photo editor, GIMP we have the fantastically formidable looking striped rhino fish.

~Richard

July 13, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 22

As I mentioned previously I am playing catch up with a few of these challenges. I finally got around to this exercise and also decided to make it a black and white image as I liked the subtle shadow.

WEEK 22: Portrait: Hands – Usually the face is the strongest element in the frame; with the hands being second. Make the hands the most important element in your image this week.

160711_52WK22_Hands

~Richard

July 11, 2016 0

Category: 52-week challenge

52 Week Challenge: Week 32

52 Week Challenge: Week 31

52 Week Challenge: WEEK 30

52 Week Challenge: Week 29

52 Week Challenge: Week 28

52 Week Challenge: Week 20

52 Week Challenge: Week 27

52 Week Challenge: Week 23

52 Week Challenge: Week 21

52 Week Challenge: Week 22

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