Category Archives: photo challenge

Selective Color

Hello!

This is Smoke. He let me take pictures of his iridescent feathers for a long time while I figured out my selective color camera settings.

John had no idea he had purple and green feathers. He’s color blind. He says his “world is drab.”

Smoke on the other hand can see things in the Ultra Violet spectrum. And he’s turning into a bit of ham for the camera.

Pigeons- cooler than you think.

You can try and argue with me on this one but be warned, I have 3,456 more pictures of pigeons and I will use them!

 

Zoom Burst

You know how some people say, “… then life happened.”

Well, this last week capoeira happened.

It’s basically the same thing.

Except that after your Contra-Mestre comes to town for a week and it flies by in a whirl of workshops, performances and rodas, all followed by plenty of food and friends and late nights, your legs hurt more than you would like to admit, you are pretty sure your feet might fall off and you have a constant stream of songs in Portuguese running through your head. But in either case nobody has done the laundry (well except for your capoeira whites of course) or gone to the grocery store or, you know, slept.

But that’s okay. Because when life and capoeira happen, sometimes you’ve just got to embrace it, tape up your feet and enjoy the ride!

I had no idea what a zoom burst was until this week’s Dogwood Photo Challenge. I had experimented with some nice colorful flower shots but this picture of my capoeira cord on the group’s drum (with a tiny string of lights for extra fun) seemed much more fitting.

 

 

 

Alternating Rhythm

I love the winter.

I love the snow and the cold, the skiing and the sledding and tromping about in a winter wonderland.

But I also love the long nights with the extra time inside to play games, read by the fire and even catch a little extra sleep.

When I was outside trying to capture the alternating rhythm in the light on the field for this week’s photo challenge, it occurred to me that maybe part of why I love winter is the alternating rhythm of my days.  With daylight hours spent up and moving in the cold weather and nights reserved for recovering by the warm fire, winter days acquire a rhythm that those long days of summer never do.

Or, maybe, it’s just that I like it when my boogers freeze.

 

 

Sun on Snow

Photographers Choice, week 5 of the Dogwood Photography Photo Challenge.

I didn’t quite capture the real warmth that the evening light leaves on the snow.

I can’t quite see that feel the evening has when the snow looks like it’s glowing golden alongside the cool blue shadows.

I missed the wintry wonder of being able to see the warmth of the sun even as your cheeks stiffen in the cold.

But that’s okay, we finally have a winter wonderland outside again and I’m happy to try again tomorrow!

Quiet Moment

Quiet Moment, week 4 of the Dogwood Photography Photo Challenge. 

I briefly entertained the idea of taking a photo of a quiet moment in my house.

There was a dog sleeping peacefully in a sunbeam.  So I snuck up with my camera to capture it. But the beep of the camera caused the dog to leap up, other dogs to run to me from all directions, and a few cats to get stepped on in the process.  The kids yelled to see what I was doing, pigeons flew in all directions, a duck got trampled in the commotion while the geese honked, the smoke detector sounded off, the radio blared and the chickens flew in circles.

Or something like that…

In reality this photo, captured outside, wasn’t that quite either, but I think it looks like it might have been, don’t you?

 

Full Manual

I haven’t used full manual mode much but I gave it a try while running the dogs this week. In the past I have struggled to catch the all the action of the running dogs and still have them in focus. But, this time, I think I did it!

It just turns out that most of the action I see is from behind.

Color Harmony

John is color blind. Not terribly so, just enough that sometimes he tries to argue that a green sweater is grey or can’t immediately appreciate the beauty of a group of cardinals at the feeder in the snow.

John is also my editor. He proof reads, tells me when I’m not making any sense, adds lots of commas and pretty much every apostrophe you’ve ever seen on this blog (Ooo! except that last one, that one was all me!). Occasionally he helps me pick pictures. Because when you like taking pictures (I do like taking pictures) and you have a new camera (I do have a new camera) it’s easy to take 500 million pictures of a leaf and then get lost in the choosing just one process because you are so excited to show off the focal range of your new camera (true story).

Tonight I was looking through my pile of pictures to choose the picture for this week’s dogwood photography challenge.  It’s about color harmony, pairing opposites on the color wheel, mixing warm and cool colors and I had too many pictures, I needed my editor… my color blind editor…

But there is more to a picture than color, and so between all the pictures of the dead leaf stuck in the evergreen tree, and the grapefruit tree with the red watering can and a pillowcase with blue beads (and yes of course there were multiple of each) he choose this as one of his favorites. 

And it does have warm and cool colors.

So I’m going with it.

And I haven’t over thought it even a little…

Nope.

Not me.

I’ve got a color blind editor, what’s to overthink?