Assignment #18

I haven't abandoned you all I swear! For the past few weeks I have been busy getting ready for the Picture Perfect Evening event that's coming up, so I haven't had much free time to get assignments done.

To make up for it, today I'm posting 4 of them! I had to skip over some because some assignments were photos of Christmas decorations. Since I am really past due to take down my Christmas decorations, I figured I'd better get those assignments done!

First, from my best friend Amber: "How about taking pictures of holiday decorations, but from a different perspective?" The end result of this challenge was a slightly different perspective than normal, and a very different method than normal. The perspective is from as high as my tripod would take the camera, right up at the tippity top of the tree. Being short, this was a new perspective for me! The method was infrared photography, which makes the needles of the tree look whitish, and gives a really deep tonal range to the inanimate objects in the photo. As always, click on the image to see a larger version.



Next, two assignments from my mother-in-law, Susan. The first one is "a photo of your husband's hands hanging an ornament on the Christmas tree".

This one was tough, mostly due to the uncooperativeness of said husband! No, not really, he was very nice and helped me out. But his hand got tired trying to stay still in one position while the "arteeste" solidified her "vision". So I let him off the hook after a few shots. No pun intended.



Next from Susan: "a photo of the tree from the bottom up." This one was an interesting challenge because straight up from the bottom turned out to be pretty uninteresting. There were some tough limitations to overcome, like having to be a certain distance away from whatever gets focused on. Also, a lot of things that look cool in three dimensions look terrible and kind of busy in two dimensions, and the branch structure of a Christmas tree is apparently one of those things. Not to be daunted, I decided I'd take a photo from the bottom up, by focusing on the bottom and panning upwards as the shutter went off. The result is this odd mix of motion blurring and bright Christmas colors. I kind of like the dizzy festive feeling of it.



Finally, one assignment that isn't Christmas related but the result of opportunity knocking. My friend Darcy's assignment got pushed to the front of the line purely because of an interesting location, good light, and a cool textured background. Her assignment was "shadow" and here is one of my favorite photos to come out of a recent trip to an old textile mill. Thanks again to my "model" husband.



And, in closing, something completely different. My mother recently made the comment that there seem to be two kinds of artists. Those who see shapes/lines and those who see color. I think I definitely fit into that first category. That's why I love black and white photography so much. It allows you to look past the distracting colors and see the shapes and patterns in the image. But I'm curious - what kind of artist are YOU? When you look at a piece, do you see shapes? colors? textures? Leave a comment and let me know.