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 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 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 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 22 - Advertisement

Week 22 had us thinking of an advertisement, or a photo that could be used for one. Since I was on vacation in a remote village in Transilvania, I got to thinking how I would make a campaign advertising the area for tourism. As we live in an age when a lot of people have no experience with countryside living (going as far as kids from urban areas having never seen a real cow or another farm animal in their lives), I thought of 'selling' a way of life instead of an area.

The idea came to me of a series posters showing real life from that village: people making haystacks, cows coming home from pasture, horse-drawn carts, chicken in the yard, milking cows, etc. - all the photos in the posters would be as 'raw' as possible, as opposed to showing an idealized image of the village. As a slogan I could only come up with "the authentic countryside experience" and for my shot I chose to photograph the cows coming home from pasture. What do you think of my poster?

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 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.

Stay tuned...

For week 9 - black and white...

Week 3 - Lines

This week was kind of an adjustment for me, as we are back from the holidays and my husband has a ton of work to do and me and my darling daughter are pretty much on our own all day (no more visiting friends or grandmothers who can't wait to take the baby off my "tired" hands). It's also become pretty clear that the park where we go for our daily walk is pretty much horrible for photography purposes, so I had no idea what to do about the theme, or where to go for shooting.

Lucky for me, I woke up early on Wednesday morning. The sun was just rising and it was freezing outside, but as I looked out my bedroom window, people were already going about their business. Some city employees were shoveling snow right in front of my apartment building, and I found them interesting enough to photograph, so I went out on the balcony - in my pajamas! - and got to shooting.

I know it's not a very original idea, shooting the street from above, but it was the most originality I could come up with for this week. In the end, I got a couple of photos I was somewhat happy with, out of which I chose this one:

I think the road makes for a good leading lines example, and the fact that all the people are positioned alongside it really brings them into focus. I also like the lines of the fence and poles in the background, and the different activities of the people. While at first I thought that the car added some interest to the middle of the shot, in hindsight I think it maybe takes attention away from the human subject and creates confusion for the viewer.

I was actually deciding between two photos, one with a car on the road and one with the road just serving as negative space. This is the other shot:

What do you think? Should I have gone for the second one?

Week 2 - Silhouette

I put considerably more work into this week's theme - the weather was nicer and I had more time - but it's really thanks to my husband that I got the shot I finally submitted. I had some photos with my first idea, I kind of liked some of them and was almost content to choose one and just be done with it. He sent me out shooting a second time and so I got this photo that I really love:

First of all, I like the background - it's really what made me stop and take photos there; I like the half coloured wall and the fact that the white part still retains some texture, and I like the cobbled stone and the snow.

I like that I was able to capture two characters, one on each side, and I like the relationship between them. When I look at the photo, for a moment I feel like I'm seeing a man and his shadow walking away from each other and it confuses me for a little while and I like that.

I also like how the silhouette on the left seems a bit two dimensional (like painted on the white wall), while the background gives a real feel of perspective so the two impressions contradict themselves.

I like the half profile of the silhouette man: the outline of his nose and hair, and the small eyelash detail. I would have loved a better silhouette of the rest of his body, but everybody was wearing thick winter clothes so it wasn't really doable. The guy on the right helps a bit with this lack of detail because we can picture what the silhouette man is wearing by looking at him.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with my photo. What do you think of it?

Fun fact: I took 103 photos in this passageway, most of them with the same or similar angle as this shot, and in the end I had a shortlist of about 5 photos to choose from. I will make another post with my three ideas for the silhouette shot and all the photos I found acceptable.

Fast fashion

Îmi place și nu-mi place poza asta în același timp. Parcă e totul prea mișcat și e totuși doar o femeie care merge pe stradă. Pe de altă parte, îmi place pasul ei hotărât în contrast cu faldurile diafane ale hainelor, și-mi place apariția ei colorată în peisajul mai degrabă industrial.

Și, până la urmă, nu-i așa groaznică pentru o poză făcută în mare grabă, în timp ce pur și simplu treci pe lângă cineva...

Un strop de roșu