Jenn Huls Photography

This Weeks Challenge Entries

I had a fairly good week with my challenge entries, I got another ribbon and an honorable mention. This first one was my favorite and the one I won a second place ribbon for. It was a really cool evening, there were thunderstorms going on all around me. I was hoping to catch some light from a lightening bolt in one of my images. This is one of the ones I managed to get it. You can't really see the lightening bolt because it is a 5 min exposure but the lit up part of the clouds is were it struck. It was so dark outside that I didn't even know it was raining on the other side of the lake until I got these photos onto my computer and saw the rain falling on one side of the image. You can't imagine the trouble I went to to get this photo, the bugs were so thick I thought I was in one of those horror movies. I would have to get my camera set up and press the shutter button and then run for safety a few yards from the lake. Not all of them were biting bugs but I got my fair share of mosquito bites. Anyway in the end it was worth the trouble since I won a ribbon for it.

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Thunderstorm at Night

This next one was for a minimal editing challenge that means "strait out of camera" no editing what so ever allowed. You can't even crop, so it takes some patience getting everything right. The challenge was called out your favorite window. Since acquiring this cool looking door it has definitely been my favorite window so I thought it would be fun to take it to a cool location and have my favorite window also include one of my favorite views. I did quite well with this one and got an Honorable Mention with it.

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A Door With a Window Into My World

And here is the door again, this is one that didn't turn out very well for the minimal editing but really came to life when I did some advanced editing techniques on it. I entered it in the free study for August and it did quite well I think I will get in the top 20 which is good for free study where there is over 300 entries.

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Left Standing

I had fun with this next one, I don't know if my girls did but it was a technique I had never done before and it was fun experimenting. We drove out to the Copperton/Bingham Grave Yard. It is a really old an quite interesting grave yard. There is no grass just weeds and wild flowers growing everywhere so it looks quite haunted. Plus it is in the middle of nowhere which adds to the spookiness. The grave stones are really old and many are tipped over most have some sort of makeshift fence around them, I guess to keep people from walking on the graves. Some had nicer wrought iron fences around them that were in fairly good condition. This was one of the better spots.

Here is how I did it for anyone curious. I had Kaylee pick a pose she could hold for at least a minute. Depending on the light your model must hold their position for 30 seconds to a minute. then after the minute is up you have your model walk out of the frame. Then you let it continue to expose for another couple minutes. What you end up with is a ghost in a single exposure. You can also add ghosts to images by layering photos in photoshop but this way is much more challenging and fun.

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Not Yet at Rest


This next challenge entry was for "the letter C" challenge. You had to take a photo of something starting with the letter C. I thought it would be fun to do a cornucopia with vegetables that start with the letter C. These crates I found at one of the abandoned buildings I photographed are also coming in handy and crate also starts with the letter C so it was a bonus.

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"A Cornucopia of C's"

That's it for challenge entries now onto a few I took this month that I really liked. This first one is of a sunflower, I really like how it turned out when I converted it to black and white. I think I am going to try and do a grouping of flowers in black and white for one of my walls at home.

Here is my next attempt at a flower for the grouping. It is a Cosmo I like it but not quite as much as the sunflower. But I do think it will work in the grouping.

And one more I am experimenting with. Not sure if the side view works for the grouping or not. But I liked it anyway. It is a Black Eyed Susan.

These next two are just some close ups of some bugs I took I thought they turned out pretty nice.