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 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.