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.

title:

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.

title:

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.

title:

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.

Title:

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.

Title:

"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.

It's been awhile so get ready for a bunch of photos

I have been slacking a bit on updating my photos, it doesn't mean I'm not taking any. I have been really busy with it lately I just haven't been around on the weekends to post my pictures like I usually do.

I was really excited about this first one. I got 1st place with it and also received my highest score to date. The challenge was "Country Music Titles" and was expert editing, which means you can combine multiple photos as long as they were taken by you during the challenge dates. This shot consists of 4 different photos, one is the main background with me in it. The second is the clock, the third is the moon and the fourth is a picture of a topiary multiplied and re sized several times. Everything was taken during the daytime but editing to look like night, I even added a few stars to make it more convincing.

Title:

Walking After Midnight

These next few of Kaylee were not used for a challenge except the last one of the set which is in black and white. I just loved them so much I had to include them here.

This is the one I used for the challenge, I had to use black and white because it was basic editing and I couldn't do much to it. The colors just didn't look right without help of more advanced editing techniques. So I converted it to black and white. The challenge was to make a six word story with a picture.

Title:

Storms of Life Come...Just Smile

This next set of Sydnie were taken for the high key challenge. She was not very happy during the shoot I was just going to give up but I decided to take a few of her crying and thought they turned out kind of cute.

This is the one I went with:

align="center">I managed to get 1 before she started throwing a fit, but I didn't use it because the focus wasn't sharp enough.

My kids and I took a field trip to the copper mines for this challenge. The challenge was to take a photo that might appear in a National Geographic magazine. I was a little surprised at how well this ended up doing. The wind was blowing so hard I could barely hold the camera still even on a tripod. So I was happy to see I got one usable one.

Title:

Turning a mountain inside out, 150 years of mining copper.

And this next one may look familiar to some of you. The challenge was to re-take a challenge photo and make it better. I decided on this one because I thought the first one was a great idea but I just didn't have the know how or the equipment to pull it off last time. This time I improved my score by a whole point and got an honorable mention.

Title:

Rosie the Riveter

This was for a challenge called "Sepia" you had to take a picture that would benefit from using a sepia tone. This did fairly well, I really like it though and may print it out to hang in my house.

This was my free study entry for June. I was in love with this photo. It did fairly well but not as well as I would have hoped.

This last one was for a tripod challenge. You had to take a photo that made it obvious you used a tripod. Which basically means a long exposure. I went back to my favorite place on the lake and got this one. I did pretty well with it and got in the top 10.

Finally this one I didn't end up using for a challenge, I was going to use it for sepia but my peer group thought the gourds would do better. I still like it though.

Still in Mourning

So, I am still trying to get over the death of a dear friend of mine, and it has been a little hard to pick myself up and get photographing again. Who is this dear friend, you ask? It is my beloved Laptop, more specifically my beloved laptop's hard drive. It suffered a nasty accident and my hard drive was pronounced dead, after getting two separate opinions. The horrible part of all of this is I had not backed up my photos in a really long time, so I have lost most of the pictures since I started taking photo's more seriously. Really really stupid of me not to back them up, lesson learned the hard way. Luckily most of the photos I either put on this blog or my family blog, so all is not lost. I won't be able to print anything bigger than a 5x7 but at least they are not gone forever. The moral of this story: go back up your photos now!!!!

We had a fun weekend in Zion National Park and Bryce National Park. I was able to take some amazing photos. Unfortunately most were casualties of my dead hard drive. I was only able to post a few to my portfolio on DPChallenge before my computer died. Here are two of the survivors:

The Watchman in Zion National Park

Bryce Canyon

Despite crying most of the day Monday, I was able to pick myself up and get photographing again later that week. There was a huge flock of Pelicans, around 200, all grouped together a little way of the main road where I live. I decided to walk out there to see how close I could get. I was knee deep in swampy marsh land and never could get close enough to take a decent shot. Here is the best I could do:

On Friday my neighbors thought I was crazy laying on the grass, trying to get some shots of these tulips for a challenge entry. I didn't even end up using them, I got something better today. But I still like them so I decided to post them here.

Today I took pictures of my girls in their Easter dresses. I ended up liking this one of Sydnie so much, that I decided to use it instead of the tulips for my challenge entry. The challenge is called "bokeh". Bokeh is a photographic term that means, blurred background. Really good bokeh has those circular or octaganal patterns.

Title:

Waiting

I also took photos of my other two girls. I like them as well but the focus is a bit off and they would get hammered in a challenge. Since I wasn't entering it in a challenge I took the liberty of playing around with the editing style a bit

Kaylee

Brianne

I had a lot of fun with this next challenge entry. It was an "expert editing" challenge so you have the freedom of combining multiple photos into one photo. Most of the time only one photo is allowed. For the photo below I combined 5 different photos to make this one shot. The challenge theme was "Visual Puns" a photographic play on words.

Title:

Haywire

This next one I was trying to decide whether to enter it in the "Empty Room" challenge or "Sadness" challenge. My intent was to show a girl in an empty corner in time out. It ended up looking more like a little girl who is left out of something and had a very sad feel to it. So I considered entering it in the "Sadness" challenge. I should have, it's doing okay in the Empty Room" challenge. But in hind site it is much more suited to the Sadness one.

Title:

Always Picked Last

For a lack of better models...

I have had a few challenges lately that require a more grown up model than what Kaylee can pull off. I feel kind of funny asking other people to pose for my challenge photos, so I have to pose for them myself. I don't like doing it, mostly because I suddenly become a lot more critical of the photo when I am in it. I have a hard time being objective. I won't like a photo simply because of the way I look in it.

This first one is me very glamorized. It was for a challenge called "What DPC love the Most" Meaning: take a picture of what people on the website tend to score really high. I must have figured it out, because I am did really well with this one. I got 4th out of 95 entries.

I posed for this one in a huge wind storm, Brianne was a trooper and climbed the hill with me and pushed the shutter button. My girls are going to learn photography by default Brianne is already off to a good start.

Title:

DPC Loves: Flowing Robes and Brooding Skies

Now for a much less glamorous shot. I wore absolutely no make-up for this one. We are studying a photographer from the 1930's Named Edward Weston. He did quite a few portraits most of them are complete side views and almost all are in black and white. This is what I came up with. I did my hair in a 1930ish sort of hairdo and did my best to pose looking to the side and pushing my remote for my camera at the same time. The feedback has been extremely positive on this photo, and I think I should do quite well with it. Scoring doesn't start until Tuesday so I won't know until then if I hit the target or not.

Title:

A Weston Style Self Portrait

Here is another view, I actually liked it better but it wasn't a side view so I decided against it.

Kaylee did get to model for one shot this week, this one was for a challenge called "Focus Point" a focus point is something that draws the eye into the photo and keeps the viewers interest. I had the idea for a bright umbrella against a stormy sky. I really lucked out with this one. We took it just as a hail storm was coming in, I was able to capture some really mean looking storm clouds coming in. This one is doing extremely well, I will get the best score I have ever gotten for an image and complete one of my goals of getting a score of 7 or higher. 7's are really hard to get I have come close so many times, only to see it drop to just below a 7 at a 6.9. This one should make it, I am at a 7.3 and holding steady! I should ribbon with this, you almost never get a 7 without ribboning. The results come in on Tuesday, and I am anxiously awaiting the results on this one.

Title:

A Bright Spot in the Storm

This last one is sort of a ho-hum shot. It was taken for a challenge called "Lucky Thirteen" I had a hard time wrapping my mind around this one and it shows in my shots. I think they are kind of boring. This challenge hasn't started yet, but I doubt I will get a good score. Who knew I had so many clocks!!!

Title:

The Thirteenth Hour

Here is another shot. How do you make thirteen gourds look interesting??? Well I tried, but everyone liked the clocks better so I went with that one. I still sort of like it better than the clocks but if everyone else said the clocks were better so that is what I will go with.

My Girls

I have been working hard on getting ready for an upcoming boutique, and I finally got done and everything set-up last weekend. So this week I got to have some fun and take yearly shots to hang on my wall of my three cute girls. I mostly just wanted head shots in B&W, nothing fancy, to blow up big 16x20 and hang on my wall in some cute frames I got on sale at Hobby Lobby. They turned out really cute. I found some cool brick backgrounds that I added in after to make the background a little less boring.

Kaylee age 10

Brianne age 7

Sydnie age 3

Challenge entries for this week

This first one was for a challenge called "Two Colors" I decided I would do a cool paper curling technique called quilling. It's mostly used to make cards and decorations, but I thought it might look cool to make a larger one and light it from below. I placed the pieces of paper on a white cutting board and put my flash underneath, so it sort of glowed from beneath. It turned out cool and is getting a good score, but not good enough to ribbon.

Title:

"Shades of Purple and Green"

This next one is for a challenge called "Half" you had to take a photo of half of something. I had an idea to take a picture of Sydnie and one of her cute little friends holding hands. They turned out cute. This is the one I entered.

Title:

Best Friends, Two Halves Make a Whole

This is the one I wanted to enter, but got talked out of it since it wasn't "half enough" I wish I would have I like it much better.

This was for a really fun challenge called "Day taken at Night". In this challenge you had to take a photo at night in the complete dark and expose it long enough for it to look like you took it during the day. I had never done anything like this before and it was fun to try. This one I took at 9:00 p.m. and exposed it for 15 min. The results are really surprising, it really does look like day, the only thing that gives it away is the star trails. The big bright globe behind the silo, is the moon although in this photo it looks a bit more like the sun.

Title:

"A Moonlit Silo"

Just so you can understand how very dark it was outside, here is a test shot I took of the exact same spot this one was exposed for just a few seconds.

I'm glad this ended up turning out well because I sat in the dark by myself with only a headlamp for light, for almost and hour and a half. It was pretty cold and kind of in the middle of nowhere. I had to hike about a 1/4 of a mile away from my car to get to this spot, and I usually don't get scared over things like this, but I have to say this was a little spooky. I just kept thinking of the mountain lion Shaun saw by our house a few years ago. I did have an annoyed Raccoon that kept chirping at me, I think he didn't like my headlight and wanted me to turn it off. I was sort of glad to have the Raccoon around because I thought, "if a Raccoon is around making noise it probably means there are no mountain lions in the area." Wow! what I do for a photograph.

One last note, I purposely held back a couple photos because there is a chance I might be getting a ribbon for them! Stay tuned to see if I do.

Portraits with Studio Lighting

I managed to round up enough flashes to make a make shift portrait studio in my basement. I still haven't got all the bugs worked out. I can only get the flashes to fire about half the time, so I have to have really patient models.

I also made my own soft boxes and wow do they ever look homemade but they work and that is all that matters. I taped some cardboard lined with tinfoil together to make a box that covers my flash to diffuse the light I have them taped to my flashes right now. Just think if I actually had paying costumers they would look at my homemade setup and run away. Luckily my models aren't paying me and they have to sit there patiently while I mess around with my homemade equipment.

This first one is my favorite and what inspired my to make my homemade studio. The challenge this week is "Got Milk?" We are suppose to take a picture of someone with a milk mustache. Kaylee was my very patient model.

Titled:
Straw Verses Milk Mustache



Kaylee was also good enough to sit and pose while I was getting things set up. She was just in her pajamas and didn't have her hair done but I still think this turned out cute.



Here another one I took while I had everything set up. I wanted to enter a portrait for my free study this month this is what I came up with:
Title:
A Sisters Love


Notice how I didn't have Sydnie in any of my studio portraits. She would never have been patient enough for this. These two did such a good job of holding still and doing just what I asked them to do.

I also did some landscape work this week for some challenge entries. We had a challenge called wheels and I found these to subjects to take a picture of:


This is the one I ended up entering. I think the one above is a better quality photograph, but I just loved this one. I passed him when I was going down a rural road looking for broken down tractors and wagons. I just had to flip a U turn and come back around to get a shot of him coming at me. He just smiled at me and looked at me like I was crazy.
Titled:

Road Hog

This one is for an Elements challenge. It had to include all for elements: Water, Earth, Fire and Air.
Titled:

A Wind in the Rushes

This one is for a challenge called Sentinel. You are supposed to take a picture of something then title it sentinel. So that is what I did. I don't know how sentinel this is, its probably going to score low for that reason. Oh well.

Title:

Sentinel


These next two are not challenge entries, just ones I took for fun. I am taking a portrait a week for a side challenge I am in. This was last weeks entry. They are not judged they are just for fun. Sydnie looked so cute in her towel after taking a bath I decided to snap a few shots of her using natural light from the window. I like how they turned out.

This one I saw someone else do and I wanted to see if I could copy it. I think it turned out fun. And its a great one for the upcoming holiday. So Happy Valentines Day everyone!