PhotoChallenge 2017 Week 22: Silhouettes

Last year I discovered the online PhotoChallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

PhotoChallenge 2017 Week 22: Silhouettes

This week I was on the ball and actually got a few shots in time to post them!  The challenge was to get a silhouette shot of some type. The goal was the do this in camera with a minimum of change in post production.  I was up at the cabin of our friends Jim and Lori Stroner during this challenge so I had access to some great subject matter!  Jim is agreat photographer and taught me a lot this weekend--check out his photography HERE.

1) Pink Sunrise:  This one is my favorite shot for sure and probably the best landscape I've shot to date.  I did have to darken the shoreline a bit to cover up a few pops of white from some boats on the distant shore, but really didn't have to tweak this one much at all.  I woke up early on accident (or because of loud birds) and saw this rosy dawn outside, causing me to struggle into clothing, grab my tripod and go running out front while I could.  By the time I got everything set up I had only a few minutes to snap some photos before the sun was up and the lightshow over.  

2) Evening Blues:  This shot was taken looking the other direction out on the lake at nightfall.  Storm clouds had been present just before this and cleared for about 15 minutes prior to full dark.  I did minimal processing on this shot other than erasing one stray bouy from the foreground.  Loon calls echoed around the area while I set up for this shot and were haunting to say the least.

3) Reflections In Foliage:  This one was my attempt at being "arty" and getting the setting sun's reflection of the foliage in the pond.  I came close in what I was attempting but the color shot had a spot of birght green off in the distance where the sun was hitting some tall pines that ruined the silhouette effect.  Answer?  Take out the color!  I added a little split toning on this as well (red to the highlight and green to the shadow) to make it more interesting. 

PhotoChallenge 2017 Week 15: Low Key

Last year I discovered the online PhotoChallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

PhotoChallenge 2017 Week 15: Low Key

This week's challenge I actually posted on time, but am only getting around to doing my short blog post now.  Low key photography usually uses a black or very dark background and most of the tones are in the shadows.  This effect is easy to pull off with post production, but this week's challenge specifically required getting this effect in camera.  

I took this following picture of the outside of the Smithsonian Castle in Washington D.C.  This arch was in the shadowed side, away from the sun, but I really wanted to get a shot of the details.  I did take a few more shots with a lighter exposure, but they lacked the impact and shadows of this one.  I did nearly no manipulation to the shot in Lightroom other than basic boosts that most RAW shots require.  

Here's a bonus older picture from when I first got my DSLR camera in 2014.  I took this wild flower shot in a shady forested area.  The flower was in a ray of light so the dark background really seemed darker.  I'll admit this shot was a bit of luck, but since then I've learned how to do this on purpose!

PhotoChallenge 2017 Week 17: Storytelling--Emotion

Last year I discovered the online PhotoChallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

PhotoChallenge 2017 Week 17: Storytelling--Emotion

This one I actually posted on time!  The idea is to tell a story with a picture--harnessing some human emotion to get more impact from the shot.  Some pictures are just "pretty" while others may not be beautiful but can still have emotional impact.  

For my shot I used a WW1 memorial that I came across in my home town of Waconia, Minnesota on a walk with my wife.  The memorial is small and frankly the soldier has seen better days, but I wanted to make this work for photo.  I tried several angles and nothing was looking good.  Finally, I joined my wife in the shade of a drooping evergreen tree and realized I could get a picture through the dangling boughs.  Once I got this back into Lightroom I turned it black and white and then added some split toning to add a bit of tint back in.  Almost a low key shot, this one is dark, but the light is mostly on the age-scarred face of the soldier.  

PhotoChallenge Week 9: Red

Last year I discovered the online PhotoChallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

PhotoChallenge Week 9: Red

This particular week's challenge involved posting your histogram with it, but I didn't get that fancy!  Due to snow and lack of time I missed the deadline for this challenge, but still went back later and completed it!  Here's my sad and cold looking cardinal...

2017 Photochallenge: Minimalism, Monotone Landscape

Last year I discovered the online Photochallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

2017 Photochallenge Week 7: Minimalism, Monochrome Landscape

I was actually excited about this one, just since it pushes you to find an unusual subject.  I thought for sure I was going to have tons of winter corn fields with one straggly tree to take shots of, then it hit 60 degrees and all the snow melted.  Then I got busy and fell behind.  I ended up taking this shot of some trees against a mild sunset off my deck.  I desaturated the shot until all you get is a mild hint of pink around the clouds.  The trees are probably too busy to really call this a minimalist shot though.

Here's a bonus shot!

2017 Photochallenge Week 5: Year of the Rooster

Last year I discovered the online Photochallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

2017 Photochallenge Week 5: Year of the Rooster

This week's challenge was to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Rooster.  Pretty open ended subject matter.  I almost didn't do the challenge at all, but ended up finding a taster glass from Brewery Vivant out of Grand Rapids that uses a rooster as a logo.  Perfect!  I blended this shot with one of fireworks I took in the back yard on the 4th of July.

2017 Photochallenge Week 4: Rule of Thirds, Toys & Games

Last year I discovered the online Photochallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

2017 Photochallenge Week 4: Rule of Thirds, Toys & Games

This week's challenge was to use the classic Rule of Thirds to place your subject in one of the invisible grid lines if one was to cut your photo into thirds horizontally and vertically.  As bonus one was encouraged to use toys or games as a subject.

I had already set up my still life stuff for last week's challenge so I grabbed a couple of cute gnomes and placed them in front of an old painting of my Grandma Stolen's.

2017 Photochallenge Week 3: Self Portrait Without Self

Last year I discovered the online Photochallenge.org weekly photography challenges and it encouraged me to try a bunch of new techniques and subjects for my budding photography skills.  I've continued this into 2017, and this year promises to be a good one!  I have fallen behind in posting, but have done a few of the older challenges so here's some catch-up!  The idea is to actively take pictures each week but I may also post some older photos that fit the bill on some of these blog posts.

2017 Photochallenge Week 3: Self Portrait Without Self

The idea of this week's challenge was to include something of yourself into a shot without making this a selfie.  I was intrigued by the way people interpreted this challenge.  I tried a few things but ended up doing a still life of my Harry Potter book collection.  This says a few things about me: I'm a nerd, I have ceramic dragons, and I own He Who Is Not To Named's wand.

2016 Photochallenge Week 51: Happy Holidays

Nearing the end of the year now and I've played along with at least 50% of the 2016 photochallenge.org challenges!  This has been a really fun way to push myself to try new techniques and take shots of things outside my usual comfort zone.  I have not done many of the portrait challenges though.  Meh.

Photochallenge Week 51: Happy Holidays

This week the challenge was to create a photo holiday card.  I wish I had done this earlier in the season so I could print and send these out!  Oh well, consider this my virtual greeting card to you!

This past weekend I camped out in our basement with my camera to observe and shoot various birds as they flitted to our two feeders out back.  The outside temp ranged from -30 to -15 that day but the sun was out and the birds were going crazy.  Some snow flurries came and went in the morning and I managed to catch this chickadee in a moment of silence with snow flashing around him. Perfect!  I did do a little Lightroom post production on this to blur out some house details in the background.  Then I put in in Photoshop CC and added a text layer with an edge glow fx.  I thought about doing a border, but felt this would affect the mellow nature of the picture.  

Have a merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate!  

2016 Photochallenge Week 50: Levitation

Nearing the end of the year now and I've played along with at least 50% of the 2016 photochallenge.org challenges!  This has been a really fun way to push myself to try new techniques and take shots of things outside my usual comfort zone.  I have not done many of the portrait challenges though.  Meh.

Photochallenge Week 50: Levitation

This past week's Challenge was to use levitation in a photo.  This was open to interpretation and several methods could be used for it.  Some where simply fast shutter speeds to catch someone in the air while jumping.  Others were using people or items on stools or hanging from strings and "erasing" the connection to earth in post production.  

I've been doing some on-line Photoshop CC classes through Creative Live and have been learning some fancier techniques of masking and creating composites, so I thought this would be a good time to try this out.  

I took a small monkey table (yes I just happened to have this tacky piece of furniture laying around to my wife's dismay) and removed the glass top.  Placing this against a black back drop with simple one-source lamp light, I took a few base shots of the monkey.  Next, with the same set-up I took pictures of several of my ape and monkey themed books.  Who knew I had so many in my home library?  Next up I fired up Photoshop CC and started a base layer of the monkey.  I opened each book photo on its own, did some minor tweaks to it, then selected the book out from the dark background and copied it into a new layer over the monkey.  Repeat.  I added a drop shadow to the books on top to add 3 dimensional effect to the floating stack.  It isn't perfect but I got a chance to try some interesting effects, including rotating and transforming a few of the books.

And there you go!  A monkey in a fez (fez's are cool again)  levitating a bunch of books!

PhotoChallenge Week 48: Bokeh

Nearing the end of the year now and I've played along with at least 50% of the 2016 photochallenge.org challenges!  This has been a really fun way to push myself to try new techniques and take shots of things outside my usual comfort zone.  I have not done many of the portrait challenges though.  Meh.

Photochallenge Week 48: Bokeh

For those who aren't familiar, bokeh is a term for the blurred light in the background of some shots.  Think of the sparkles from streetlights or Christmas trees in the background of some shots.  This can be distracting or a flaw in the picture, or can really accentuate and improve a shot--leading to a dreamy quality.

The ideal set up for Bokeh shots is using a small f-stop (2.8 f) to focus in close, with resulting blurring of the lights behind.  The lowest my lens would go was 5.8 f and I got too much detail in the background.  So I cheated!




























I ended up using an unfocused shot of the Christmas tree in our living room as background.  I then took some miniature X-Wing game Star Wars ships (Fantasy Flight Games!) and took some macro shots of them against a black background.  Then I combined the two shots in photoshop after erasing the plastic stands that the ships stood on.  The result looked pretty cool, but I went a step further and added some green laser blasts from the stalking TIE fighter!  The toughest part of this process was getting a decent fire effect at the impact point of the blasts.  There has to be an easier way!  I also added a bit of motion blur to the Falcon in order to give the impression of movement.

Inspired By Reading: Sabriel

A friend of ours, Andrew Thornton, started up a virtual book club a few years back called Inspired By Reading.  Like most book clubs, each month a new book is read, but instead of just talking about the book the members of the group are challenged to create something inspired by the book.  Most of the members are artists--especially jewelry designers--so this is a very visual take on the classic book club.  I've taken part sporadically, but my wife pretty much gets every month's challenge done.

This month's selection is the first in a young adult series by Australian author Garth Nix.  Sarajo got me to listen to the first book several years ago on disk and I promptly read or listened to the rest of the series as well.  The audio is read by Tim Curry (of Rocky Horror and Clue fame) in an extraordinary way!  

Though the protagonist is a teen girl and the books are marketed as young adult, these deal with dark themes and are quite complex.  The book begins with Sabriel finishing up her time at school in a world that seems a lot like WWI era Britain.  Soon she is thrust into claiming her birthright as Abhorsen--a magician of sorts tasked with keeping the dead in their place and keeping the world safe.  

I really, really like this series.  Since I work in photo rather than jewelry--I had a few ideas of things to try with my meager Photoshop powers.  The Abhorsen has a magic sword and uses a set of bells to command the undead back into their place in death.  Death is viewed as a dark river with 10 gates or falls, each one leading farther into the final resting place past the 10th gate, with occasional restless dead attempting to make their way back to the land of the living.

1) Abhorsen!  Here's my take on Sabriel's father (The Abhorsen prior to her taking over the job).  For this shot I took a few shots of myself dressed in cloak with sword and bell, followed by a few creepier shots of myself crouched over with a ghoulish mask on.  I superimposed my Abhorsen self into a swamp shot from our visit to Ligonier, PA this past summer.  I then warped and erased an underlying shot of myself as one of the restless dead into presence in the shot.  I'm still learning technique here and I'm pretty happy with most of the shot, but feel like I'm a bit too stark in the foreground.  

2) The Restless Dead:  Here's the underlying shot of myself superimposed on a solarized waterfall shot from a trip to Duluth this summer.  I elongated my jaw/teeth and fingernails and warped my body to seem unnatural as well.  I used a radial blur filter to blur out the outside edges and focus on the creepy self portrait.  Oh, and gave myself glowing red eyes of course!

2016 PHOTOCHALLENGE, WEEK 46: URBAN DECAY – SELECTIVE COLOR

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

2016 PHOTOCHALLENGE, WEEK 46: URBAN DECAY – SELECTIVE COLOR

Last week's challenge called for Urban Decay...but I couldn't leave my very Rural town the whole week due to family and work getting in the way of my photography!  So I trolled though my back stock and found a suitable shot for this challenge.  The idea of the challenge is to desaturate most of the picture to black and white or sepia while leaving behind one color (or more) to give a different look/impression.  I've been a fan of this technique for a while and have been trying out a few such shots myself.

This is a shot I took in Asheville NC last year.  I actually replaced the sky (very pretty and blue in the color shot, but boring in black and white) with another cloud shot from the same trip.  Then I desaturated every thing except red using Lightroom CC.  I think the effect is pretty cool.  I almost greyed out the brick to leave just the grafitti.  

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 43: Little Planets

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

Week 43: Little Planets

This week's challenge was a cool one.  Take a panoramic photo and manipulate it into a little planet.  There were some phone apps that did this, but I tried it out in Photoshop.  I actually didn't get a chance to go out this past week to take a good picture for it, so I used some older shots to practice the technique.

The steps:

1)Either take a panoramic shot or crop a landscape into a panoramic shape.  Ideally there should be some empty sky since it will be easier to meld together in the final product, but clouds can be cool too.

2) Change the size of the shot to a square (use the same height and width dimension) which will oddly elongate everything and look crazy.  Make sure to uncheck the constrain dimensions box or chain icon or this won't work.

3) Flip the shop upside down.

4) Use the Filter-->Distort-->Polar Coordinates to turn this into a circle.

5) The hardest part: Do your best to blend, clone stamp, and healing brush the edges and line where the photo touches upon itself.

An option that is a little more difficult has you copy and flip the photo so you get a mirror image on each side of the shot--this makes it line up well on the final product but does duplicate the resulting photo so it can look odd.  I did this with the below shots since my edges were not lining up well.

Sunrise!  I like this shot a lot and the silhouette makes it easier to blend the middle.  You can tell this was duplicated, which I don't love, but the other method left a huge line in the center that was near impossible to blend due to the complicated cloud patterns.  In a blue sky shot the odd streaking at the 4 corners is minimal and easy to blend away.

Wind.  This one was an odd long shutter speed shot I did last fall during some high wind.  To get this outside-in look all I did was skip step #3 above and this was the result.  I like the duplicated cloud pattern that looks like a dragonfly!  I wish the original had had less tree movement so only the foreground was blurred.

Inspired By Reading Book Club: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

A friend of ours, Andrew Thornton, started up a virtual book club a few years back called Inspired By Reading.  Like most book clubs, each month a new book is read, but instead of just talking about the book the members of the group are challenged to create something inspired by the book.  Most of the members are artists--especially jewelry designers--so this is a very visual take on the classic book club.  I've taken part sporadically, but my wife pretty much gets every month's challenge done.

This month's book was a short story collection by Karen Russell named after the title story Vampires in the Lemon Grove.  I didn't read the whole collection--I'm in the middle of two short story collections already--but did read the title story since I like vampires.  The story was strange, somewhat haunting and wistful.  I liked it and didn't like it at the same time.  I like the imagery of two vampires finding each other and falling in love for centuries, but just didn't really "get" the whole thing.

Regardless, here's my artistic inspiration from the story:  I struggled with this a bit, but eventually got it looking OK.  I took a macro shot of a handy lemon--destined to be used in a cocktail--for the background.  Then I discovered a shot of a fruit bat that I took on our summer trip to visit Andrew and William in Ligonier, Pennsylvania from the wonderful Pittsburgh Aviary (where the Lorakeets pooped on my).  I manipulated the picture to fit over the lemon.  The tough part was getting the edges to look right and it still isn't perfect, but I learned some new Photoshop techniques in the process.

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 41: B&W Wealth

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

Week 42: B&W Wealth

Last week we were tasked with getting a picture that personifies "Wealth" in black and white.  It was interesting to see people's takes on this one.  Lots of fancy cars and houses, but some more intangible ones like love and natural resources as well.  I went pretty literal on this one and broke out my old childhood coin collection to set up for a macro shot or two.  I used coins from 1800's to the 1980's since coinage hasn't changed a whole lot over that time, other than the actual worth of the coins themselves.

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 40: Graffiti

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 40: Graffiti

This week we look at graffiti as art.  I've been intrigued by street art for ages, especially at the fine line between this being art versus vandalism.  I'm certainly more partial to the graffiti that shows some artistic talent instead of just putting you tag on some piece of turf...

1) Crash:  This week, I've been mostly out in Waconia (a far Western suburb of the Twin Cities) with a dearth of urban street art.  We did get a brief sojourn into downtown Minneapolis on Sunday for the wedding of some friends at Day Block Brewing, and I discovered this little shot on the way in.  Not thrilling, but I kind of like the crashed out car in the background...

2) Lurking Cat: This is a cool spot in Asheville, NC with graffiti style murals and several bronze cats scattered about.

3) The Wrong Side of the Tracks:  This is another shot of Asheville...

4) What?  Me Worry?  This one is from Portland, which is just coated in graffiti.  Just about every building, street sign, and open area in certain parts of town are tagged with the stuff.  Some are silly, some beautiful, some just messed up.  You judge which this one is...

Disney Resorts and Restaurants: Drinking Around Disney Part 3

HERE is the link to my Beerploma blogpost as part of my Drinking Around Disney series!

2016 Photochallenge Week 38: Mirrored Water Reflections

This past week's photo challenge was to use mirrored water reflections.  I really like this type of picture and try (key word here) to take such pictures when I see the opportunity.  Often though, this type of shot requires some planning to make the right time of day, and often hopes that you will find a nice subject to make the shot stand out.  We had rain and overcast days pretty much all week that I was free so I had a hard time getting a good photo for this.  I am posting a couple of shots from my recent trip to Florida that fit the bill as well!

1) Pumpkin!  With all the rain this week, I discovered a puddle on top of my deck table and posed this little pumpkin (that I stole from Heather) in the puddle.  The overall shot was too drab and not much of color came through in the reflection.  To remedy this, I turned the whole picture black and white except for the reflection and then accentuated the color slightly.  I like the look overall.

2) Pelican:  I liked this shot of the pelican in the hippo grotto at Disney's Animal Kingdom.  The water was a little grungy so it isn't perfect but oh well!

3) Disney!  This is a night shot from across the bay at the Boardwalk.  I didn't have a tripod so had to brace the camera on a railing so it has a little motion blur for this long exposure.  I had  few more with a ferry boat coming in that looked very odd (the boat was elongated due to long exposure).

Drinking at Disney Part 2!

HERE is a link to my second post for Beerploma on Drinking at Disney!  We focus on Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Disney Studios.


Enjoy!