Patti hosts this weeks Lens-Artists Challenge – Celebrations around the World. How and what do you celebrate in your part of the world or in places you’ve traveled? Do you commemorate an historical event? The grape or olive harvest? Religious events? Do you go to music festivals? What milestone events do you commemorate? Show us joyful, solemn, traditional, or avant-garde festivals, parades, feasts, holidays…to name a few. To get your creative wheels turning, here are some examples from our travels.
I wish I had more examples to show but here are a few I do have that are outside of the UK…
We flew to Miami and picked up a cruise of the Dutch Caribbean for my 60th birthday. That falls in late December so we were there for their Christmas Holiday Season. It was my first experience of being somewhere warm in December. Sitting outside in warm sunshine, dressed in shorts and a T-Shirt, watching the film Elf on our ship certainly seemed all wrong. In 2018 we happened to be in France when their soccer team qualified for the World Cup Final, which they went on to win. These are soccer fans getting face painted and then queuing to get into a large outdoor fan zone for the final. The atmosphere was fantastic.Young French soccer fans walking the streets in Cannes.France again, this time Nice. We stumbled into this Ironman Triathlon and arrived as these front runners were emerging from the transition zone from bicycle to marathon. This was one of the leaders but I have no idea who he is.For my 50th birthday we decided to visit my brother in NJ and celebrate there. As we were there during the Holiday Season we bought tickets for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. That was superb and the building itself is something else. Our plan was to spend my birthday celebrating in Princeton but we got snowed in. I’ve never experienced being snowed in before or seen that amount of snow. The UK comes to a standstill with two inches of snow. This fall covered the fire hydrants! Amazingly, the following day, the roads were clear enough for us to drive in to New York.A Greek wedding we stumbled across in Crete last year. That’s rice hitting the groom side on. The priest followed the wedding couple down the steps and then emptied a large bag of rice over the pair of them.
Finally a few images from the Fiesta in Estepona, Spain where we were staying a few weeks ago. Lots of the locals, especially the youngsters, dress in traditional costume. A brilliant experience for us.
That’s it from me. Thank you to Patti for hosting.
Anne hosts this weeks Lens-Artist Challenge – Summer Daze. Here in the UK we’ve been experiencing unusually hot, sunny, summer weather. Reports that temperature and heatwave duration records are being broken seem to be a weekly occurrence.
You have to be quick with your UK ice creams at the moment!Continue reading →
I’ve used this image, taken in Crete two weeks ago, as an example of Linear perspective. I took the picture without knowing that’s what I was doing. What I was looking for was an interesting picture of the minaret. There was always someone in the frame so I used them to my advantage to show it as a tourist attraction and give everything some scale. I use people in my images a lot for that. I shot that image at f8 with a 28mm lens to keep everything in focus, placed the minaret in the centre of the image and used the narrow alleyway and buildings as leading lines in to the minaret. Sounds fancy doesn’t it but that’s what the definition of Linear Perspective tells me I’ve done.
Patti hosts this weeks challenge and asks us to use compositional tips to improve our images. The tips and full challenge details are outlined in her original challenge post which you can find here.
We’ve just returned from a holiday where my camera has been really busy. Having returned on Friday I shot a wedding yesterday so there’s no way I’ll get out this week to shoot new images for the challenge. What I can do is use some of the images from yesterday, and last week, to fit some of the tips in Patti’s post.
The old port lighthouse with three small tenders moored up nearby. If the boats had been more interesting I’d have walked around and made them the main subject, rather than the lighthouse.
Tina has set this weeks challenge – The rule of three.The rule of threes depicts images which contain three subjects. This is a lesser-known photographic concept but perhaps one worthy of further exploration.
I have to say this was a new rule for me. I can’t say I’ve ever deliberately taken a picture with this rule in mind, up until today that is. I could say that I’ve tried to shoot still life subjects, like food, in a triangle around the frame. That very loosely follows the same concept but the objects in those triangles can be very different things and not obviously three distinct items.
We’re currently on holiday in Rethymno, Crete, Greece. So without access to my portfolio at home I went out for a walk this morning and tried to find groups three to photograph for the challenge. Like last weeks Lens Artist tasking, it was another interesting photographic exercise. I’ve ended up with a few images I’m pleased with that I wouldn’t normally have shot. It’s one reason I love Lens Artists, I’m thinking differently and shooting images I wouldn’t shoot – last week and today are two great examples.
I’m typing on an iPad, which is painful, so without further ado here are my challenge images, all shot in Rethymno today…
Colourful rustic chairs outside a local restaurant.Terracotta plant pots on some colourful stepsThree small windows in a building located in the towns old fortress.A colourful window display. By now I was starting to realise I was just photographing other people’s ideas for groups of three 😎I got a bit more creative with this intersection of three roofs.I did create this group of three and tried to tell a little story with them. They’re take away coffee cups from a local cafe we’ve been visiting. I’ve loads more to collect 😃
Thank you to Tina for hosting and setting another challenging challenge. It’s proper ‘SCHORCHIO’ here so I’m getting back on the sun bed now. I’ll leave you with a lovely sunset shot from last night.
Our trusty, old, metal watering can. Shot with a vintage Canon FD 55mm f1.2. I shot the rose at f1.2 to give that really shallow depth of field. I always wanted a lens for portraits with a really shallow depth of field. This lens is perfect for that and it’s very sharp as well.
Egidio sets this weeks challenge. his original challenge post is here. To quote from Egidio’s post, these are the rules for the ‘Stuck in a Place’ challenge:
My ‘RED’ Image for this weeks challenge. Brizzle is slang for Bristol and this sign was displayed in a city centre pub, in Bristol.
This week Ritva has set the Lens-Artist Challenge with this brief – For this week’s Lens- Artists challenge , you are to select one color (excluding black and white). Share a maximum of 6 photos where your chosen color is the prominent hue, or alternatively, you may share one photo featuring each of the following captivating colors in their various shades: red, blue, green, purple, orange, and yellow.
Here are my images featuring the colours selected by Ritva.
BLUE – Another Bristol image. the former Spectrum building in the centre of town.GREEN – Unripe olives on a Greek market stall.PURPLE – A colourful dragon fruit on a stall in Borough Market, London.ORANGE – I have quite a collection of these close up images of rustic doors. I make A3 prints of them and use them as faux table tops for some of my food photography.YELLOW – A colourful Caribbean house wall
Thank you to Ritva for setting and hosting a great challenge. I love a colour pic and I’m looking forward to scrolling though this weeks responses.
This image is similar to the scene in the film ‘Gladiator’ where Russell Crowe returns to his small holding. It’s not Russell Crowe in this image, it’s my wife, Linda, and there’s no bad news at the end of this track. However both and Russell were doing the same thing, reaching out to feel the texture of the wheat.
Anne has set this weeks Lens Artist Challenge. Anne has asked us to show images where texture plays an integral part. Here original challenge post can be found here: Lens Artist Challenge #397: Texture
Steve Hyde 