4 and 0
The tournament on DPchallenge has been going 4 weeks now and our team so far has won 4 weeks in a row. I have been so busy trying to put in the best entries I possibly can that I haven't had time to shoot much of anything else. It seems weird I only have 5 photos to post but we did have a couple weird challenges that I didn't love how my photos turned out so I am not posting those.
This first one I am almost embarrassed to post but it was for a challenge called you+1, basically a self portrait with another person or animal in the image with you. I wanted to do something goofy so that no one would recognize me in the photo. This cool house is about 20 min from where I live, I found out about it from a friend in my neighborhood. It is called the "up" house and is worth a visit especially if you know the movie. The inside is decorated like the movie as well. I also found out People Magazine has an article this week on this house. I had the idea to dress up goofy and use an umbrella as my prop, but I remember seeing this house on one of my friends facebook photos and thought it would make the perfect backdrop. Luckily it was my 4 year old's birthday party that week so I ordered balloons in colors that matched the house and found some old clothes, including an old prom dress that matched the house as well. I was nervous because I didn't know if people lived in the house and if it was in a crowded neighborhood. Luckily it is a show house for the contractor and no one lives in it, also it is at the end of a street with no house really close by. So I got to make a fool of myself in relative privacy. Just a couple of curious onlookers.
My efforts were ultimately paid off and I won first prize with my photo. As a side note my 4 year old told me I looked really pretty, now I am not going to feel quite as good when she says I look beautiful.
This one was for an expert editing challenge called fool the viewer. In expert editing you are allowed to combine multiple photos as long as they are all taken by you and during the week of the challenge. This photo is made up of 18 different photos, I wanted to make it look like she was under water even though she was just lying on a white backdrop on my basement floor. Here is how I created this photo:
I took a trip to the local aquarium with my 4 year old and took lots of pictures of aquariums and individual fish. Then I took a picture of my daughter laying on the floor with her hair and skirt arranged like she was underwater. I had her hold her arm our in a position so that I could fit a bird cage in later. Next I took a photo of a birdcage, and lots of pictures of bubbles that I made by pouring water into a fishtank. Once I had all the photos I needed I put them together in photoshop, it was alot of work and the bubbles were especially hard to get to look right. They still don't look exactly right but at some point you just have to say it's good enough.
I had some pretty stiff competition for this challenge so even though I got one of my best scores ever I only ended up with 4th place.
This one was for a challenge called motivational poster. I really didn't have any ideas for this one but when I was out fishing with my family I saw this flower that had about 4 different kinds of bees on it at once so I started snapping photos to see if I could get a good one. When I got home I thought it would make a good subject for the poster. Funny this is the same theme as my kids school sponsored art contest. Maybe I should have let them take the photo, although taking pictures of bugs is really hard to do. They are so small and move so fast.
This one was for a challenge called "Wine" since I don't drink and I don't know anyone who does I wasn't going to enter this challenge. But on the last day I remembered we do have some wine grapes that grow on our pergola so I picked a few and some vines and threw them in a wine glass and called it good. It scored pretty well but I don't really think the photo is anything special. I just have to remind myself on challenges like these I do learn a lot about lighting, which is worth something.
This last one was for free study, I really didn't have high hopes for this one. I had used all my best photos for other challenges so I just didn't have a good one left over for free study. This is one I took at the aquarium. I thought it was kind of a cool shot so I decided to enter it just to see. It actually did fairly well. Anytime I can score over a 6.0 in free study I am happy.
