Challenges

I have been having a lot of fun taking photos and entering them in challenges on the website DPC. I have had some photo's that have not done very well and others that have done better than expected. Its a fun learning experience. You just have to learn to never get your hopes up too much and learn to have a thick skin when your photos score poorly.

I am excited to announce that this photo got an Honorable mention in a challenge that finished up last night. I didn't get a ribbon but I get a little star and by my photo. I finished 5th overall and got my best score so far on a challenge. I was just tenths of a point away from getting 4th or even 3rd. So the scoring was very close. If you want to check out my profile page here is the link:http://www.dpchallenge.com/profile.php If you want to have some fun and vote on some photo's, you can sign up for a free account on their website.

Title:
"Hidden Valley Ranch"

Homemade Landscapes

This next one is currently in scoring right now. But it is doing really well! I don't think I will win a ribbon with it but I think I might get in the top 10, which is a coveted spot because your picture appears on the front page with the winners. This challenge was called "complimentary colors" we could use any of the complimentary colors as the main subject in our photograph. For those of you who didn't take art class: complimentary colors are opposite of each other on the color wheel, Red/Green, Purple/Yellow or the one I chose Orange/Blue.

Title:

Orange and Oh! Those Blues.

This next one is another challenge I entered called "portrait tryptic". This mean you take a series of three photos and present them in a way that tells a story. I am not scoring well with it. I still like it, and it is very interesting to see my girls merged together like this. But there are a couple problems with it. First it doesn't necisarrily tell a story, I guess in a way it does but I could see how people wouldn't think so. Also, Sydnie would not smile with her mouth closed and the older girls looked bad smiling with their mouths open, so I just went with it. Also, the faces don't line up perfectly, but this has nothing to do with how I photographed it or edited it, its just that a 3 year olds anatomy is very different than a 6 or a 9 year old so there was no way to get them to line up.

Title:

"Three Sisters"

I have been trying to take some other pictures of just regular stuff, but it has been hard to keep up with that and my challenge entries. I did manage to get out and take a few pictures of the beautiful leaves we have had this fall. Here is my favorite:

Title:

"Holding Hands"

Here is a cute one I took of Kaylee at Dinosaur Park, I applied one of the fun free black and white filters I found online.


On the website DPC they also have little forums where you can post pictures that are not involved in challenges. Other people on the site look at your photos and comment on them. A forum I am currently involved in is called layered images. People share photo's they have applied textures or layers to. It has been fun and I have found a ton of new textures to use on my photos . Here are a couple the ones I have been working on.

Titled:

"At the Park"

Titled:

"Clocks"

My turn???

I really don't want to post pictures of myself but that is all I have to show for this last weeks picture taking. My photo challenges for DPC have been taking up all of my picture taking time, and this week happens to be a challenge on self portraits. I am trying to do something a little different. Sort of out of the box. So when Kaylee saw my the picture I am thinking of entering she said "mom that is weird" I think so too. But I am trying to expand my photographic horizons and try something different we will see if the ship sinks or sails.

So I took several pictures of myself by holding the camera at arms length. Then I took the ones that actually turned out, (not many did) and I cropped different parts of my face out. This is my eye. I thought I would include this because I thought the reflection in my eye was sort of cool.

Then I took all those parts and arranged them in an abstract manor, applied some filters to make it kind of blurry or grungy. I really wanted to add an overlay to make it even more grungy, but that is not allowed in a challenge. So this is the best I could come up with, kind of weird I know, but kind of cool if you like that sort of thing, not sure if I do.

Here is another shot, I applied a special filter I found that gave it sort of a high key or blown out look. I liked it because it hides some of the wrinkles I am getting at my old age of 35 and extenuates the half way decent features I still have. It's probably nothing I would hang on my wall but kind of cool anyway.

I know you have seen this one before, but I was playing around with those new filters I found and really liked the way this one turned out. The filters I found were free, and work directly with photoshop, so they are super easy to use. The one I used on me was called trashcan, and the one I used on Brianne is called yearbook. Here is the link in case you are interested http://www.optikvervelabs.com/virtualphotographer.asp

This is one other picture that took up a good share of my picture taking time. It was for a challenge called "Homemade Landscapes" I am doing really well with it. If things keep going the way that they are I should place in the top five, and if I am really lucky I will get a ribbon. Although, I don't think my score is going to be quite good enough for 1st!

"Hidden Valley Ranch"

In case you are wondering, yes I made the whole scene and yes, it was a pain, and way harder than I thought, both to make and to photograph. I made two separate scenes, then photographed them in a way that made them look like one connected photograph. Here is a snapshot I took so you could see what I am talking about:

So even though I did not have a photo for each day this week, I actually took a ton of photo's way past my photo a day quota. Most of them were Halloween snapshots and although very cute not quite good enough to post on this blog. I will leave those to post on my Family blog.

Brianne's Turn

Both Kaylee and Sydnie have both had turns being featured on this blog, as well as had a picture featuring them in one of my entries for the photo contests I enter. I think Brianne was feeling a little left out. Brianne is a good sport about letting me take pictures of her, but she is not always the most photogenic. Of course I think she is a beautiful little girl, but she is really extremely camera shy. She has a hard time smiling naturally when the camera is in front of her. This week was a different story. I think it was because she really wanted to be in one of my photo contests. Whatever it was, she did a great job, and you can hardly tell she is afraid of the camera.

This is the one I am using for my next photo contest. It wasn't necessarily my favorite of the ones I took of her, but it was the one that met the requirements of the contest best. The name of the contest is Mid Day Sun. Taking pictures in the middle of the day is a challenge for any photographer. We are suppose to take a photo of whatever we like, but it has to be with mid-day sun, and show how you overcame the challenge of harsh sunlight. I decided to back light Brianne with the sun, and use my flash to even out the dark shadow that it cast on her face. I think it turned out really well, I have high hopes for this one. It is titled

"Mid Day Dreams"

This one is my personal favorite of her. I was saying silly things to try and get her to smile. It worked, but she sort of moved when she laughed, so the focus is a little off. I don't mind it, but it would get ripped apart in a photo contest. Also we were in the shade at this point and while this a good way to deal with mid day sun, I think it would loose points for not actually being out in the sun.

Almost a smile....


I liked this one too. I think the composition is nice with the brick in the background.

Love her eyes in this one....

So I tried to take pictures of Sydnie earlier that day for the same contest, but Sydnie would not cooperate. I got her all dressed up, and she would not even look at the camera. Oh well, I couldn't get the lighting to work anyway. I managed to get a few cute snapshots of her but nothing photo contest worthy. I digital scrapbooked my favorite ones together just for fun.

This week I went to take some photo's of the Salt Lake City Temple before the weather turned bad. I wanted to get a few more shots for my craft show. My favorite one actually ended up being a reflection. I took it from the large reflecting pool in the front of the temple. I cropped it down to just show the reflection, then flipped it. I think it turned out really cool.

This is one I took for another photo contest I am entering. The contest is titled "Dreams". When I was buying Halloween candy I was inspired by this idea. I had to borrow candy from two of my neighbors to get enough to fill in. Now I have the tedious job of sorting it all out and giving it back to them. All I can say is I better get a good score. Thanks to my neighbor Taylee for being my model. The title of this photo is....

"Every Kids Dream!"

This is another photo for a contest I have already entered. It is a little silly, and the photography is not the best. Besides the fact that the monster looks like a child did it. I tried and tried to get Shaun to make a monster for me, because I know he would have done 10 times better than me, but he would not give in to my pleas for help. Despite all its shortcomings, most people seem to like it, and am getting one of the higher scores that I have gotten in a challenge. This contest theme was Halloween song titles, we were suppose to depict a Halloween song in a photo or series of photos. The title of this photo is...

"The Monster Mash"

I was going to have a foot mash the monster, Kaylee came up with the idea to use rolling pin. I think it turned out even cuter this way!

It's all about Sydnie

Sydnie turned 3 a couple weeks ago, and I have been trying to do a photo shoot with her, but things just weren't cooperating. I took her a few weekends ago to a place in the canyon, but she was being silly and I wasn't happy with any of those. Then the weather turned bad. Finally, things came together, nice weather and a happy child. I got some really fun photo's of her.

Love Me, Love me not? This one is my favorite, and of course I love her.

This is my next favorite, great shot of her personality and her eyes.

Another cute one:

This one I like, because as a mom, I know this look. She has a stubborn little smirk that is saying, "I know you want me to look up, so I am pretty sure I'm not going to."

She was pretty excited when she got all the petals off.


Pure Joy!!!

I have been taking other photos this week. Most of them I am still working on for challenges I am entering on DP Challenge. I do have a few done. Sydnie was good enough to pose for me again for these photos. The challenge was titled "chalk", this one I almost chose:

And this is the one I chose. The challenge starts tomorrow and judging goes for a week. I'll let you know how I score.

"Chalk it up to Fun"

(this is the title, kind of cheesy but they all have to be titled for the challenge)

I have already entered and been scored in two challenges. This one finished with a 5.3 out of 10. Seems like not that great of a score, but it really isn't too bad when you consider the winner won with a 7.3. I actually finished in the top 1/3 of all the entrants, and my score was well above the average. So I don't feel too bad.

"Its Nice in the Vice"

(my entry for the "metal on metal" challenge)

Kaylee was my model for another challenge called, Fill Flash. In this one you have to use your flash in a way that helps you enhance your subject. Since it was a cloudy week last week, it was a perfect setting for this. The judging ends on this one tonight, but so far I am doing pretty well with a score of 5.5. It just goes to show that people judge more on emotions than technical ability. Honestly, I think the photo of the fly in the vice is technically far and above this picture, but it really doesn't evoke any emotions. This one, however, really sets a mood and I have gotten a lot of great feedback on it. I will let you know how I ranked when voting ends tonight.

"Blue on a cloudy day"

my entry for the "fill flash" challenge

So, I threw this one in just to show you what I have been working on with the temple pictures I took. I found some really cool new overlays. I don't know if this will be the final product, but I thought I would show you the direction I was going with these, and see if you liked it.

A fun weekend of pictures in Idaho, and a few from around here too.

I've had a great week taking photo's. Although I didn't get to do much practicing on portraits, which I feel is what I need to work on the most. The weather wouldn't cooperate, it was rainy most of the week. So maybe this week will dry out, and I can get some good shots with people in them, for now you will just have to make do with these ones:

This is my choice for my fav photo of the week, I don't know why maybe it's just because it is simple but still wow! I love the colors and I didn't have to do a thing to this picture, not even a crop this is just the way I shot it.

I went to Idaho to see family but also take some pictures of the Temple (I don't have those edited yet) and this picture. There is an upcoming photo challenge on bridges, this is the best I could come up with, I had to trespass to get it. I'll let you know how it does.

My brother-in-law just purchased a new Harley. He let Shaun and me go for a ride on it. I wanted to go take some photo's of the windmills they are putting up in the foothills next to my in-laws house. Not the greatest picture, but fun anyway. If you look closely you can see a truck in the rear view mirror. It was honking at us. I'd like to think it was because we looked so cool on the Harley, but I'm pretty sure it was to try and scare me while I took this picture.

I had to trespass to get this shot too. But it was worth it. I found this rusted old combine at the base of one of those huge windmills. I thought it would make a great contrast between old and new:

I included this one to show you just how big they are, I circled the combine so you could pick it out. Look how big the windmill is in comparison to the combine, and anyone who has seen a combine knows they are not little.

One more windmill shot. You just have no idea how many there are from the Idaho Falls valley. I counted 50 that I could see from my moms house who lives in the valley about 5 min away from the foothills. Once you get back in the foothills there are hundreds more. Here are just a few, I could have turned my camera in any direction and gotten a similar shot.

This is the water tower in down town I.F. it was next to the bridge I was shooting, so I got a few shots of it as well:

Sunrise... Sunset

Where I live there are not many great sunsets. I am right up against a mountain, so we don't really notice the sun going down. But we make up for it in spectacular sunrises. Here is a particularly lucky one I photographed (getting up early to run does have some advantages):

As for sunsets, nowhere has my home town beat for spectacular sunsets, and our trip there this weekend did not disappoint. Here is the view from my in laws house.

This next one is an experiment in layering pictures, I think it turned out pretty cool here are the originals:

and here is the two shots combined with a little tweaking in photo shop:

I told you I took a lot of pictures this week. Here is one I took and applied a painterly effect to. I think it would make a great puzzle:

Just a quick shout out to a website I have recently become a member of. I have the link under photo tutorials and photo friends. I will post it again here dpchallenge.com but in the future look under those tabs to find it. I think it is an awesome way to improve photography skills. I have already entered 4 challenges, I don't hope to win any, but I have held steady with a respectable score for someone new to this whole photography thing. A lot of the entrants are professional photographers with teams of people working for them, but there are also a lot of people like me who just love photography and want a place to get their photos critiqued so that they can learn from it. My goal for this year is just to make it into the top ten with one of my photos, its a pretty lofty goal but I may luck out. Wish me luck!

Not there yet...

In the past few weeks I have started to feel a lot more comfortable in Manual mode on my camera. You have some success, and it really gets you excited. Then you take more pictures, thinking you are starting to know what you are doing, and realize that you are not there yet. I had so many frustrations with picture taking this week, it just made me realize how little I still know about it. I managed to get a few photos to show you this week, but these are the best out of literally hundreds I took.

Some of my failed attempts include: a beautiful sunrise (part not knowing what settings to put it on, part getting set up a little late.), indoor birthday pictures of my daughter ( I tried some new things out with my flash, but still couldn't get them to look the way I was hoping), and a portrait session I did today with my three daughters. We were going on a trip up the canyon to see the changing leaves, so I decided to do their hair a little more than I would have, and take my camera along to snap a few photos of them. I still am not sure what I did wrong, the settings seemed to be right, but when I got home I was really disappointed with the majority of my pictures.

I managed to get a few good ones of my oldest daughter, here are the best of the worst (of course I am speaking of the photo quality not my daughter, she manages to look cute despite the photographers shortcomings):

This next one is not quite in focus but I actually kind of like it that way, she has kind of a dreamy look on her face, and the soft focus plays into that mood. I guess sometimes accidents work in our favor.

This one was a bit of a surprise. On a photo blog a friend recommended, a famous photographer said she had been given a challenge to take photos from a moving car without looking through the viewfinder. I decided to give it a try. Most of my attempts were not worth a second glance, but this one I loved! And I would have never have gotten such a great shot if I had stood there and planned it. I love how crisp the background is, and then the blur of the foreground from the moving car. I may have to try this experiment more often.

This was an unplanned photo as well. I was trying to take some landscapes of a waterfall, (they all turned out okay, but uninteresting) Then I happened to see these honeybees buzzing around at my feet, and I stopped to take a few pictures of them. They turned out way more interesting than the waterfall.


Okay, I must be obsessed by bugs, just be glad I didn't get my hands on a tarantula that was in my neighbors yard. This guy was on my driveway. I gave him a ride to some of my flowers and then took his photograph. My girls loved this one. We zoomed in really close to look at all the details. I do think Praying Mantis are pretty cool bugs, and really great pest killers too.


The neighbor boy left his bike laying in my driveway. So before running it over with my car (just kidding) I took a cool close up of it. I did the fake HDR technique on it, and liked the effect.


Speaking of miserable failures, I even borrowed a tripod to take pictures of the full moon. But with no telephoto lens, they just were not that great. My plan was to take photos of the moon rising in the evening, then get up early and take photos of the moon setting. The photos of the moon failed miserably. So instead of wasting more time on the setting moon, I focused my camera in the opposite direction. I ended up getting a much more satisfying long exposure shot of my neighborhood, with the lake behind, just as dawn was starting to show behind the mountains.


This last one is not the greatest. It was a photo study I did on motion photography. You can get the idea of what I was trying to do, ( a crisp in focus subject, with the background blurred) But lack of proper equipment got me again. I need a better lens, with a better zoom, to make the background really blur properly. Also, you can tell by the look on my daughters face, that she really wasn't trying to go that fast.