Week 17 is “Landscape: Urbanscape”
Sometimes the best camera is the one with you. This one is actually an iPhone pano of the road behind the construction site for the new Core Sciences building in Memorial University. I couldnt get all the scene in with one standard photo so a pano works best. The new building is huge and at the moment it’s a steel skeleton. I cant wait to see what they do with the exterior.
Week 16 is “Portrait: Movement”
This one should have been easy seeing how I have a kid at home who never stops moving but I don’t want to make this project all about her. I’ve been trying to find a nice shot of a person or group of people to show movement and finally found one today when some people took to a pond near work to play hockey at lunchtime. A bit brave of them considering only last week there was open water on the pond but the ice held so that’s a indication of how cold it has been lately. The pond has also frozen without much snow falling so the ice surface was perfect for their skate.
Week 15 is “Artistic: Metal”
Somewhat simpler this week compared to last week, at least I didnt need new gear. This week the theme is Artistic: Metan and living in an urban environment there plenty of metal around. Some nice and clean, some rusty and broken. I took my camera out with my 50mm lens on it for a bit of a challenge and wandered around the area I work in. Near my office are some large industrial style warehouses. They are open to walk around so I walked and the things that caught my attention were the red doors in the pale metal walls. I couldn’t get further back without ending up in the trees, perhaps I should have gone back with a wider angle lens so I could get more of the wall in but I had challenged myself to do this week with the 50mm so this one will do.
Week 13 is “Portrait: High Key”
Finally got the gear I needed to do Week 13. The theme this week is high key portrait which means taking a portrait with a blown out all white backround. I also prefer the black and white versions of high key so that’s what I went with. After experimenting to perfect my setup the night before I got Molly to stand for a few shots last night. She just turned 4 so this is also her 4 year birthday portrait. She’s getting good at following instruction, though she’s 4 so time is limited so I have to get everything in about a minute before she gets annoyed at me.
To do this properly you almost need a full photography studio with 3 or 4 lights, a white wall, flags and reflectors. On the other end of the spectrum I’m sure I could have used photoshop and a large window but I wanted to learn so I went for an in between option . Bought some new flash gear (hence the delay) including another speedlite to replace one of my older ones, stands and a reflector holder. I used two lights. One behind in a softbox and my large reflector in diffusion mode to increase the backdrop even more. In front of her I have a second speedlite in on a stand with an umbrella. Both were triggered by radio triggers.
I’m glad I waited for this, I got a shot I liked and I learned a lot.
Week 14 is “Landscape: Zoomed In”
Took my camera and the longest zoom lens I have and went for a walk in the snow looking for a good subject for a zoomed in landscape. I thought this one would be easy but it actually proved more challenging than I expected since how do you do a zoomed in landscape and highlight the fact that it’s zoomed in? Eventually I decided to revisit a spot I went to for week 2’s traditional landscape and redo it but this time zoom in and use the trees to frame Signal Hill. It worked out well, obviously a landscape and the trees framing it show I’m zoomed in. Since I’ve visited this spot in Autumn and now Winter maybe I should revisit it again in Spring and Summer to complete the set, a challenge within a challenge.
Finally, yes, this is week 14. What happened to week 13? Well I had to skip week 13 since I know exactly what I want to do for that shot but I need some new flash gear that is on it’s way, somewhere between Montreal and here. Yes I could do something else but this is a style of portrait I want to learn so I’m waiting. Hopefully it arrives before Week 15 and I’ll do the shot then.
Week 12 is “Artistic: Transportation”
As promised yesterday when I finally posted Week 11, here is the image for Week 12. Since week 13 starts tomorrow this just about puts me back on schedule.
This week is Artistic Transportation so I kept an eye out for something different and found it when I went sledding with my daughter. We bought a blue sled and spent some time going down a little hill in our garden. She is 3 and I am Irish so neither of us are experienced sledders, small hills suit us just fine. After a while she got bored and started playing with the snow so I took the chance to take some photos of the sled coming down the hill to try and get just the blue sled on the white snow. Took a few attempts pushing it up the hill with one hand and holding the camera in the other to grab the shots as is slid back down. Got this one which matched what I had in mind, plus had the slide marks in the snow to give some context.