Challenges from the Wordpress Community
Whilst looking through some older posts I came across one about Painshill Park in Surrey which I wrote about over 4 years ago. Time flies…
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #87 | Reflections
The six visual keys to a great photograph are:
This month we are going to look at textures. While the structure of an object is its form, the material from which it is made constitutes its texture. Is it hard or soft, smooth or rough? You are aiming at translating texture visually, bringing life and energy to a photo through shape, tone and colour. Study the texture and forget about the object. Texture becomes the subject here.
This week's assignment - Find something rough and get in close. Try contrasting a rough texture against a smooth texture
If you want to see what this month’s assignments are in advance then please click here. All the assignments are available from the menu on the left under the 2020 Photo Challenge / Assignments.
The six visual keys to a great photograph are:
This month we are going to look at textures. While the structure of an object is its form, the material from which it is made constitutes its texture. Is it hard or soft, smooth or rough? You are aiming at translating texture visually, bringing life and energy to a photo through shape, tone and colour. Study the texture and forget about the object. Texture becomes the subject here.
This week's assignment - Find something smooth and get in close
This week’s challenge from the Lens Artists is a different one: Tina would like us to search for specific items from the archives
Challenge Items: Sunrise and/or sunset, Something cold and/or hot, a bird, a dog, a funny sign, a bicycle, a seascape and/or mountain landscape, a rainbow, a church, a musical instrument, a boat, a plane, a waterfall
Extra Credit Items: An expressive portrait of one or more people, a very unusual place, knitting or sewing, a fish, an animal you don’t normally see, a bucket, a hammer, a street performer, a double rainbow, multiple challenge items in a single image.
I have thousands of images in my archives, so I went searching, looking for the more unusual items that could meet the brief. If you click on an image you can go through the gallery and read further information about each image.
Well that brought back a few memories. Nothing for sewing though.
(the header image is of my three youngest grandchildren who were playing at driving a car on the beach in 2017 – Luca then aged 16 months, Isla aged 2yrs and Lorenzo aged 3yrs.)
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #85 | Treasure Hunt
My challenge this week is a difficult one. How to photograph a subject using a background which is a pattern without distracting from the subject. I used several photos from my archives because the weather has been so awful this year I have not yet managed to get outdoors to do any photography. In hindsight I might have thought of using patterns within the home such as cushions or blankets, but I’m not much of an indoor photographer. Another skill I need to practice!
My post is generating a lot of interesting comments and I am fully appreciative of each and every one of them, as it is my intention this year to examine the way I take photos and how to improve them. And it is by having other people look at my photos and point out the ‘mistakes’ or ‘flaws’ that will help me to improve. My aim is to take less, but better, photographs instead of the too many snapshots that I am in the habit of doing. So I need all the help I can get to iron out those things that stop a good photo from being a great photo.
One of my images was a sculpture (Adam) at the Eden Project with one of the biomes behind it, which I felt worked reasonably well, until it was pointed out that perhaps the patterned background could be bigger, so I looked for a different view to see if it works better. This is all I could come up with where I have the same sculpture in the scene. As you can observe there is a lot of foliage around, this is taken outside of course, and the landscape is very much used to grow plants and trees. I’m interested to see what you think of this one. Or does making the pattern more dominant decrease the importance of the subject?
The assignment: Use pattern as a background for a more substantial subject.
The original photo:
Like I said. A tricky assignment.
Over to you…
TRAVEL WORDS 