Week 41 - Inspired by a Famous Photographer

If there's nature and it's black and white, I can pass it as inspired by Ansel Adams. I am not sure I have used techniques similar to his, or even a subject matter that he would have approached, but I liked this misty forest so I think at least I got some interesting textures and shapes in my photo.

Oh gosh, I just realized, there are only 11 weeks left in the year!!!! What should I do, embark on year two?

Week 40 - Sound

When I thought of sound I instantly thought of music and dancing. I love listening to music, singing and dancing, so I wanted to take a happy dancing photo for the week's theme. In the busy world we live in, sometimes it's good to put your headphones on, let go of everything and dance to your own tune! Many thanks to my brother for being a perfect model on an autumn Sunday afternoon!

Alors on Danse!

Week 39 - Break the Rules

This is my daughter and the "magic tunnel" at the playground. It's been a busy week and going to the park with her was one of the few moments of calm, so I took advantage and took some photos. As far as breaking the rules goes, I think I was rather conservative, just going for a centered framing of the subject. Unfortunately it was an overcast day and the photo is not as sharp as it could be because of this, and I wish I would have payed more attention to what is behind her in the shot (to eliminate the bits of sky and foliage at the edge of the tunnel if possible).


 I do like the weird reflections in the walls of the tunnel, and my subject's excited expression! What do you think?

Week 38 - My Personality

I feel most like myself when I'm with friends, talking about interesting stuff and enjoying a sunny Sunday. I am a social person, I like to listen to my friends and get involved in their hopes and dreams, and help them achieve them if I can. Sometimes I can even be a little addicted to other people, when I am all by myself for long I don't feel well. So, I had coffee with friends today and thought about taking a photo of our drinks and snacks. I decided to cut three of the four circles to make the shot more interesting, and tried a little cross processing as well. All in all, a simple Sunday photo.

Week 37 - Run

As my daughter is learning to move faster and faster, she is always happy to chase us around the park. I thought I would take advantage of this and use her as my model for the run theme. Unfortunately, a bout of bad weather left me with little over an hour of bad light to shoot, and trying to use a fisheye lens for the first time left me with just three photos to choose from. I did not get the dramatic exaggerated photo I had in my mind, but I think this one is ok as a start. I am looking forward to playing with the fisheye some more in the future.

Week 36 - Dreams and Fantasies

Getting out of the subway, on the escalator, I am suddenly painfully aware of my breathing. It has become fast and I cannot slow it down, closing my eyes doesn't help, I'm only making it worse, what happened, did I see something weird on the way here? am I having a heart attack? I feel sweaty and my heart is racing. Think! I can't do it, my heart is pounding in my chest, in my head, in my mind, where am I, I cannot concentrate on anything but this empty escalator! Was it always empty, I feel like there were other people around, where are they, something horrible is going to happen, I can feel it in every fiber of my body, and it's just me and this hazy world and the escalator... help!

Week 35 - Fire

Inside a church that has no electricity, a candle illuminates a spring that people believe will heal all ails. The spring is visible mostly because of the light reflected in the water, as the whole enclosure is rather dark. The icons on the walls are blue, and the small flame burns inside a blue ceramic receptacle, and the general mood of the place is something between mysticism and eeriness. I hope I managed to capture at least some of this...

Week 34 - Wabi Sabi

I loved this wooden hay rake from the moment I saw it because it is a good symbol of living in a village in Romania. The hay rake is a very important household tool and even today villagers know how to make wooden ones, and some still use them. I love the details that break the symmetry of this one, like the imperfect curves of the wood, and the fact that there are five teeth on the left of the handle and six teeth on the right. I am not sure that I managed to get the perfect wood textures and contrast, but I am still fascinated by this object, maybe because it feels like it has been used and loved.

Week 33 - Night Photography

This is the night sky over Viscri village, Romania, captured with a 30 second exposure. I shot with a very wide angle, so there is some perspective distortion but I decided to leave the photo as it is because it adds to the strangeness. I love the weird colours of the grass and house, achieved by a combination of street light with different colour temperatures. I also like the eerie shadows from the trees, I think all in all the shot is very mysterious.

Week 32 - Edited by Someone Else

We had a reunion with my husband's friends from college this weekend, so between drinking beer, running around with kids and hanging out with people I've not seen in a long time, I had little time for shooting. I also let my husband choose which photo he wanted to edit, but neglected telling him about the 'extra credit' for a portrait shot... this is the photo he chose

Week 31 - Magic Hour

This picturesque scene is 1 minute away from Bucharest's most crowded square. I cross the bridge in the background every day on my way to work, but I can't say I really noticed the boat and the strange structure in the middle of the river until yesterday. After spotting the scene, I walked around to get a different angle and I found some plants growing by the river. I decided to take the photo through them, for an added dose of mystery.

Week 30 - Unusual

Not much to say this week... I liked the way the colours looked like behind these glass doors, so I waited for a person to pass and give me an eerie silhouette. What do you think?

Week 29 - Street Photography

This is more of a consistency shot, as I barely had time to take 20 photos on my way to and from work this week. I tried shooting from the hip but my results were horrible, so I chose this one taken in one of the most interesting subway stations in Bucharest. I had a slow shutter speed so I am not sure about the sharpness, but I otherwise like the lonely commuter in a big industrial 'landscape'.

Week 28 - Repetition

The downside of going back to work is that it's hard to find time for taking photos when your days are filled with office-home-work-baby stuff and your weekends are busy with chores you were unable to do during the week. So for my repetition assignment, I lugged my camera in my purse the whole week, in hopes of finding something interesting. Alas, the most interesting thing I could find is pretty ordinary, a fixture in the ceiling of the cafeteria at work. I do like the repetition of lines and rectangles and the different light sources in the shot, but I don't think I would hang this photo on my wall.

Week 27 - Water

This was a 5 am shot after a crazy night partying at a wedding. The boys from our gang were set on having a swim before the night was through, so after some of the 'older' guests started leaving, they dared each other until one of them jumped in, and eventually the got even the groom to join the 'madness'. I took several shots of them swimming in the eerie blue light of the pool, but this is the one I like the most. Maybe because the subject is my husband!? :)

My one wish was for a bit more breathing space to the left side of the shot, but the pool was small and crowded and getting a sharp shot at 5 am was achievement enough.

Party on!

Week 26 - Negative Space

I am not a fan of the 'negative space' syntagma, but I loved the reference to the Japanese "ma" from our assignment email. I am far from that ma, however, since my first idea of a moody figure against the sea was spoiled: I could not find a good vantage point and the seaside was just too crowded to get my minimalistic composition.

So I went for a different approach: reducing clutter through a clear sea-sky background, all shades of blue and white. I was lucky that my subject is also wearing white, so his face stands out even more in the photo, and I used the low angle and wide frame for added drama. I like the shot because it tells a different beach story, the one of the food vendor working while others are relaxing, but I want to revisit my first idea as soon as possible.

Oh, I almost forgot! This week is the halfway mark through the one-year project! Happy to have reached it, I hope to last the whole year!

Week 25 - Dress Up

I am not a fan of costumes and dressing up, and this week has been my most hectic yet, so I shamelessly tried a knock off of an idea I saw online, and tried to 'illustrate' my baby's dreams. As a first attempt it's not horrible, but I think I still have a long way to go.

Week 21 - Architecture

The newest bookstore in town resides in a beautiful building, dating from 1860 and renovated last year. It used to be a bank before it was confiscated by the communists and turned into a department store. It was abandoned after the Romanian Revolution and the owner has been trying to get it back from the state for the last 20 years. Now it is bustling with life again as the new 'hipster' spot in town, a meeting place for artists, designers, book lovers and tourists.

On this particular morning it was almost empty (10 am on a Sunday) so I was able to get a good shot of the beautiful spiraling staircases and banisters with the perfect number of people to complement the place without making it feel crowded. If you remember, I had taken a previous photo of this scene for 'black and white' week - you can see it here. For black and white, I decided not to use the shot because it felt very crowded and with no apparent subject. I have to say I am much happier about the retake!

Week 20 - Single Light Source

It's about time I started catching up on these posts, I have about 15 to go before I'm back on track...

Just my luck to have no sunshine on the one day I had free to shoot something this week, but I managed to come up with something nonetheless. The photo below is from an art fair taking place in a somewhat unconventional space with big industrial looking windows. I spotted this woman looking out the window and decided that the light coming from outside could be considered a 'single light source'. I especially liked that her posture looks relaxed, but her face is very tense / sad in the reflection, and this created a bit of tension for me. Anyway, here is the photo in question, let me know what you think:

Week 19 - A New Technique

This week's challenge was all about trying something new and experimenting. I tried playing with double exposures and freelensing (shooting with the lens detached from the body of the camera), but in the end I did not think my experiments were good enough to include in an album, so I went with my fallback plan of trying out the "advanced filters" feature on my Fujifilm X-E2 camera.

There are a lot of filter to play with, among which selective colour, 'tilt-and-shift' and soft focus, but the two I experimented with most were colour-pop and toy camera. Colour pop (obviously) gives all colours a boost of saturation, making them stand out, while toy camera produces weird colours and a prominent vignette, to simulate a cheap film camera of old. I also went one step further in my experiments and tried a lot of shooting from the hip, centered subjects and finding weird or unusual shots during mundane activities like walking in the park. I had a lot of fun and captured a few interesting shots, out of which I chose this one to submit:

I just realized this is the first photo with a portrait orientation that I submit for the 52 frames project... Anyway, I like this shot because of the sharp angles and the unbalanced feeling it gives me, I like the lines forming a V and splitting the frame in three, and I like that the guy's hands and body are also forming Vs and sharp angles.

All in all, playing with this filter has been fun, but I don't know if I would use it on a day to day basis. The colours are interesting, but the vignette is a bit too much for me most of the time.