Personal Photography Challenge: August

This month's photography challenge subject was animals. I love watching animals in the wild, although I'm not particularly fond of pets in the house, nor visiting zoos. Each of these photos was taken while out and about.
 

This Moon Jellyfish is just one of dozens seen in Tod Inlet this weekend. I paddled around in the dinghy, pausing to look at the bottom and all the wonderful life scurrying about. These graceful jellyfish, about 8 inches in diameter, pulsated like translucent ghosts along the shore. This photo was taken with my IPhone and the contrast enhanced slightly.
 

An unintentional animal photo - I was intent on the flower and the bee photo-bombed the capture. The mad blur of wings indicates the speed he was going. Taken with my Nikon D7100 and nothing was done to the photo, taken on Portland Island.
 

This is another straight out of the camera photo, taken with my Nikon. Mr. and Mrs. Purple Martin. They were not very shy at all. Nesting boxes at the Ladysmith Marina were filled with their swooping comings and goings.

I'm late to the party this month as we've been out on the boat again. Tim returns to work on Monday so things will be a little more back to normal. 

Thanks to Donna for hosting the Photography Challenge.

Photography Challenge: Colourful

Donna's photo challenges are always interesting. This month, the challenge was colourful. (Actually, it was colorful - but I'm Canadian, so I'll add the extra "u.") I found this challenge a little more difficult than earlier ones. Don't we always photograph colour? How could I force myself to learn a little more with this challenge? 

My favourite colours are the cool tones of blues, greens, violets, pinks. I can handle some yellow, but not too much. My home and my garden very much reflect this cool palette. So I decided to stretch myself a little and go outside of my usual palette. Ta Da! Above is a detail of a Golden Chain Tree, currently blooming along the path I walk. Doesn't it glow against the greens?

A trip to Butchart Gardens was a revelation. I can walk by beds of orange, red, and yellow flowers without once feeling the urge to snap a photo. Okay, red, sometimes, but it has to be a deep, cool red. This time, I forced myself to really look at the other colour combinations. The jagged edge on the orange tulip above caught my eye. I think I photographed it more for the shape than the colour. But colourful it is.

I slipped backwards for this photo. A long, lovely bed of white tulips nodded gracefully in elegant uniformity. Then I saw her. And I giggled quietly to myself. One rebellious poppy, flaunting her blue petals and golden center in the midst of all that white. Brave little poppy. "Look at me," says she, "I'm unique." Isn't she adorable?

I enjoyed this foray into new territory with colour. Did you learn something new during this challenge? What is your favourite colour palette?

All photos were taken with my Nikon Coolpix P7100 and edited for colour contrast in Picasa. 

Visit A Personal Photography Challenge for more colourful displays. 


 

Words and Letters

It's time for Donna's Personal Photography Challenge. Each month, Donna, an accomplished photographer, sets a challenge for those who want to join in. She provides links to sites that offer advice and inspiration for the particular topic.  It's fun! Perhaps you would like to join in next time.

This month, the challenge was Words and Letters. Here are my interpretations:

Focal length 6.0, 1/100s, f2.8, ISO 100

Last November, my mother gave me an old hymnal that belonged to my maternal great-grandmother, Agatha Rempel, born in 1897. The book was given to her by her father in 1903, in Chortitza, now part of the Ukraine. Agatha came to Canada, married, and later gave the book to my biological grandmother, also named Agatha, who married my grandfather. She died about 6 months after the birth of her 10th child. My grandfather then married Agatha's sister, Mary. In reality, Mary was my great-aunt, but I knew her and loved her as my grandmother.

Focal length 6.0, 1/50s, f2.8, ISO 100

 The book is in German, although, oddly, printed in the United States in 1880 by the Mennonite Publishing Co. Although I cannot read German, I love the look of the text. Paging through I found this postage stamp sized card with the words The Lord is my Shepherd in German. I wonder which of my forebears placed it there.

Focal length 6.0, 1/60s, f2.8, ISO 100

Handwriting is unique to each person. When I look for recipes in my old-fashioned recipe box, I enjoy the handwritten cards most. The handwriting of friends and family is a reminder of personality.  I wish we used handwriting more. Modern technology makes writing by hand almost unnecessary.

I have a box of old letters. The above photo is taken from a letter written to us in Ecuador by my paternal grandmother Katrina (known as Tina). Sentences follow each other without regard for capitalization or much punctuation. No matter. Love is conveyed by the words and the very act of sitting down and taking the time to write.

I'm looking forward to reading other bloggers' interpretation of this Personal Photography Challenge. Thanks to Donna for hosting, and for encouraging us all to become better photographers.

Street Scenes: A Photo Challenge

Donna's Photo Challenge this month was to get out there and take photos of street scenes. I tried. I really did. This week, though, there weren't many people out on the streets in my area. It was too cold. 

This was a hard challenge for an introvert like me. As I walked, I pretended to photograph scenery with my camera, slowly panning it around and stopping as if I were taking a photo of some tree, but really I was looking for human victims subjects. One person who saw me with my camera promptly hid behind a telephone pole, ostensibly looking at her cell phone, but I saw her watching me. She moved away when the camera moved. Utterly demoralized, I quit looking for people.

Then, at the shopping mall, I saw this gentleman marching along at a good clip (remember, it was cold) and thought I'd snap him from the back. He couldn't duck behind a tree if he couldn't see me, thought I. So I clicked. Now, I wonder where he was and where he is headed. To meet friends for coffee at Starbucks? To go to Canadian Tire for some auto parts? To the drug store to fill a prescription for his ailing wife? The possibilities are mind boggling. I quit looking for people again. 
  

Instead, I went back into my archives (2009) for a few photos from Bratislava (Slovakia). I had my point and shoot Olympus at this juncture. I really do need to return to Europe with a better camera, don't you think? (are you listening, sweet husband?)

Our local guide told us that after the fall of communism, civic pride was restored and people began fixing up their homes and businesses again. The yellow building on the right has been repaired. However, the city decided that some buildings should remain in disrepair as a reminder of how things had been for many years. A visual cautionary warning. On the street.

On another note, the colour of the repaired building is known as Empress Yellow, named after the Empress Maria Theresa because it was her favourite colour. (She was the mother of Marie Antoinette.)
 

These two photos qualify as street scenes, don't you think? As I prepared this post, questions came to mind, such as, "Why do I think photos of manhole covers in Bratislava are so interesting?" "Why have I none of my own city's manhole covers?" These are questions to ponder in the dark of night when I cannot sleep. Or not.

What IS interesting, however, is the little brass crown. They mark the "Coronation Road" which 19 Austro-Hungarian emperors followed en route to being crowned in the Gothic St. Martin's Cathedral. 

Click on over to Donna's Personal Photography Challenge blog and discover links to people who really did follow the rules and succeeded. 

A Personal Photo Challenge: Food

Donna hosts a photography challenge each month, providing a subject for us to photograph, and lots of links to helpful sites. This month, the challenge was food. And it was a challenge.
 

I took so many photos and discarded most of them. They just didn't look like I wanted them look, nor even as good as other food photos I've taken. 
 

Shadows everywhere in spite of using a foam core board at right angles to bounce light and using the brightest corner of my dining room, with corner windows for light.
 

Frustrated, I went back and looked over some of the food photos I like best and discovered they were all taken outdoors. So out I went, in my sweater and socks, onto the deck, with my pears (second photo) and my salad. Little Miss A watched from inside the house. "What are you doing, Nana? Close the door or the bugs will bite me." Luckily, it's much too cold for bugs.

I was also determined to use more of the manual features of my little Nikon Coolpix, and so I took about a hundred shots of the roasted pears with créme anglaise using various settings. In the end, I find that the settings feature on my camera usually gives me the photos I'm happiest with - I used the closeup setting for all of these. Any editing involved some cropping and boosting the contrast with Picasa. 

For more challenge participants, visit A Personal Photo Challenge. Next month is layering textures - yikes - I know nothing about that! A good challenge is ahead.

Oh, for food photographers, the book Plate to Pixel by Hélène Dujardin is wonderful. It`s a fine primer for food, but also any still life photography. I highly recommend it. 

A Personal Photo Challenge

Each month, Donna from Cottage Days and Journeys posts a personal photo challenge. Since one of my goals for 2013 has been to improve my photography skills, I've joined in. 

For this first photo, I crouched down and took a photo of my herb garden. It's odd how the black water pipe crossing the path is so much more visible in a photo. In real life, I hardly notice it. 
 

This photo was taken looking down at the chive blossoms. There were so many bees - a very good sign for gardeners - but they move quickly and getting a clear shot was difficult.
 

For this last shot, I got below the level of the blossom to shoot it with some blue sky background.

All shots were taken with my Nikon Coolpix P7100, basically a point and shoot digital. I used the Scene mode, with the first two photos on Landscape and the last one on Closeup. Post shooting processing was a simple matter of deepening the shadows and adding a touch of highlight.

I'm looking forward to seeing more composition variations at Donna's A Personal Photochallenge site.