Architecture/Landcscape/Seascape

I know I say this every week - but landscapes really are not my thing. As I tell my mother in law, I do people and animals. I do appreciate beautiful landscape work (Check out Mark Gray's work - gorgeous) but it's tricky to execute well. You need to be up early or out at dusk, neither of which is very practical with a 4 yo child in tow! So I have one shot that I like, one that's ok and one that's a nothing shot but I needed something...

 AAMI Park at dusk (if only i'd been 10 mins earlier and had a tripod this could have been awesome! Still very pleased with it though)
 
 Beach

 

 Sea

Stranger Expression ~ by Taylah.

I was awfully unorganized for this theme. I decided to finally venture out into civilization on the last day of shooting. Instead of going into the city or somewhere even a little more busy, I ended up at the beach on a very quiet day. This was my first issue. I then forgot the bring my zoom lens, so I was stuck with my 50mm, looking very creepy. Once I got home with very few shots, I re-read the theme brief and realized I'd totally misinterpreted it. I thought the challenge was to simply photograph strangers, I missed the whole 'expression' part entirely. And my shots didn't match at all. Oops.

BUT, I've decided to post what I've ended up with anyway. (Even if I'm a few days late... I wasn't going to post anything originally.)

 

Theme 7: Stranger Expression

This has been my hardest theme so far.

I decided to go after work one day this week to shoot, even though I saw strangers showing emotion I froze up was too scared to take a single shot!

I decided I needed 'back up' so I asked Tanya to catch up, with another person there that 'had my back' I felt much more comfortable shooting :) We went to Buddha's Birthday Festival. It was very interesting to be inside a Buddhist temple and there were some yummy food stalls around.
Here are my fav pics:

Theme 7: Stranger Expression - Tanya

Eek! I swear I felt my blood run cold when reading the theme for this fortnight! I was all set for my second failure at posting up a theme in a row, until Hannah let me know of a celebration of Buddha's birthday happening this weekend, so I joined her this morning for a few shots.

I still felt very self conscience and only came away with 35 shots, but managed to get 3 ok ones from the set. Whilst not my best ever photos, I was pleased to have finally taken a photo of a stranger, but could not have done it without moral support from Hannah - so many thanks for the invite :)


We started off inside while the blessings and celebrations were taking place. I chose this one as while it isn't a wildly expressive shot, her expression captures what felt like a very serene event.




We then went outside amongst all the food stalls and got some more shots there.

Cooking and taking orders.
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Enjoying the snacks. These potato twists were awesome! Hannah and I had one each - so bad but so good :)

Theme 7 - Stranger expression by Meagan

WOW! This was really difficult for me! I take photos of animals mostly, not people... but trying to take sneaky photos of people was hard!!

I decided I'd take photos of people I didn't know who came to our whippet race meet....

This was all well and good, except I forgot... only remembering after we were about 90 mins into the day!

Here is Whippy and her owner Riley celebrating after Whippy chased the lure for the first time.  I thought this was really sweet!

Next was a new whippeteer who was elated his dog had run!! As you can see his friend behind him was pretty pleased to!  I realised after I took this that he'd spotted me... eeek!

And struggling with HUMANS and expression.... I decided on some puppy expression! Dogs that I am not familiar with... hence strangers! :)

This is Jesse and Whippy post race, their first ever go... both very pleased with themselves!

Though they do look like they are line dancing! :)

I am hoping for an 'easier'  theme for the next fortnight....

Hoping everyone did okay, and look forward to seeing all the photos!

Meagan (aka. MnDM)

Stranger Expression - Kristen

Wow, THAT was scary!

I got the dates wrong on this 1 and had a nice place for the weekend, a day after shooting ended. And while I am sure that I could have snuck them in, it is against the spirit of the challenge and I have made a goal with myself to get the pictures on time.

Friday night I ventured into Adelaide. My husband was having drinks and dinner after work and I was to pick him up so thought I could sit in Rundle Mall for an hour or so snapping away and hopefully getting braver. It turned out dinner and drinks was just drinks and he called me only 10 minutes after I arrived, so I have had to pick the best of the limited shots I got.

I knew as soon as I had taken this that shutter speed was not quick enough, I'm so annoyed about that but I liked it anyway. This little girl was having such a great time with her Dad.

Then I looked around and saw these 2 girls enjoying their evening, such a typical sight with teenagers these days.

Rundle Mall has some well known sculptures of pigs. Kids always love to play on and around the pigs and have their photos taken, I thought sitting near the pigs would give me a chance at a picture but nothing eventuated until I just got up to go and meet hubby and saw this little girl run by begging her Mum for a photo. Not as much expression as she had when she was running by but the best I could get.

I am not overly happy with any of these but I am loving the challenges and how they make me try different things and move away from my comfort zone. I would actually love to go and do this again on a nice sunny day.

Stranger Expression

Oooooooh boy, taking photos of strangers is tricky! And catching them with 'expression' is even trickier. I so chickened out of even trying to do sneaky street photography, even though that was my initial intention. So while this does feel a bit like cheating, here's my version of expression - shot at a kid's jazz concert. It was super fun and this dancer guy had THE BEST face ever! Lots of big 'happy dance face'. (i loved him, love me some cheesy dancing....)

The 'hey you over there look at me, I'm so awesome :D' face.

Next is the 'I'm being smiley and super engaging with the children' face (even though he looks well, just a little creepy if I'm honest)

Now this one might be slightly controversial but I'm going with it anyway! Jazz drummer with no particular emotion/expression because this is the classic 'jazz musician being so incredibly cool and musical that they never have any expression' face.Which to me is an expression entirely worthy of its own category!!

BTW, concert was amazing! Hanging out for the recording so I can have cool kid's music at home :)

Announcing Theme Seven: Stranger Expression

theme Six ran over a very busy period for most of us so we did extend the deadline a bit, but now we're ready to get back on track with a new theme.

Kristin has chosen Stranger Expression
Shooting runs from 06 April - 19 April inclusive
Images post on 20 April 2013

We have to capture emotion on the face of someone we don't know - should be an interesting adventure!

Theme Six: Sports

My favourite sport - scuba diving!
If I can't be diving, I like to be snorkeling. And snorkeling with the whale sharks is pretty nifty! Tilly's favourite sport is "Crab Chasey"  

Sport - Kerri

When this theme was first announced I had absolutely no idea where to start. I'm definitely not a sports oriented person and I don't even have one single friend who plays sport. Sure, they do crazy things like run up Mount Lofty and back, but I'm pretty sure they don't want me photographing them while they do it.. lol. I personally couldn't think of anything worse than trying to sit through a game of football or something similar so I got Googling and looked for some less mainstream sports that sounded like they might be fun to watch, as well as make for interesting photos. I thought I was on to such a winner when I discovered that over the Easter long weekend I could go and watch bike polo (like normal polo but bicycles instead of horses), parkour, tricking and kite flying. Once again illness got in the way and I didn't make it out of the house at all during Easter. I had to decide between not participating this fortnight or finding another way to represent sport that I could do quickly and easily, as even standing for more than a few minutes has been a bit of an issue for me.

I remembered that a lovely colleague who passed away a few years ago was a huge horse racing fan and a member of the South Australian Jockey Club (SAJC), which brought me around to thinking about the Victoria Park Racecourse. The racecourse started up in the 1840s and was home to the SAJC until they moved to Morphetville Racecourse a few years ago following a decision to demolish Victoria Park, which was subsequently torn down in 2010. The now heritage listed grandstand, built in the 1840s when the land was first used for horse racing, still remains and is an iconic landmark in Adelaide. I decided to photograph the old grandstand and capture my own little piece of local sporting history.

Sport

 Firstly, my apologies for posting late, time and the Easter holidays threw me a bit.

Sport! Yay! My confession is that I'm a Rugby League fan - yes unusual for a born and bred Melburnian but there you have it. I like taking photos at the game, but not always as it disconnects me from watching it as intently as normal. Still its nice to have gear that lets me take reasonable action shots.

Having said that, I'm not rapt with this lot. I think I thought I had more good shots to choose from than I really did. Also being a night game and trying to shoot fast, meant I was pushing my camera and lens to their limits - so the pics are grainier than I'd like.

This shot is 'the run' - wind up those legs and run into (well, preferably straight past!) the opposition.

Next, we have 'the crash' - league is a hugely physical game involving lots of collisions. I feel this shot  illustrates that....

And lastly we have 'the hot'. Whilst it is sexist and a bit uncool to admit, it must be said that this player (Cooper Cronk) is one of the reasons some of  us ladies like the game ;)  He is a gun player, so intense and involved in the game that even in this tiny rest break, he's still looking and assessing what's happening on the field. We love Coop!!

Theme 6 - Sport by Meagan

Well I chose this theme, and it turned out to be a little harder than first thought! With Easter holidays  falling right in there it meant a lot of the normal sporting fixtures were not played this weekend!

Never fear!!

My first shot is of my favourite sport of all, and that is our Social Whippet Racing Club!  All our whippets get together and race around like mad men, and so many smiley happy faces at the end!

On Thursday we went to the Carlton vs Richmond AFL match at the MCG - this was my first ever live AFL game so I was unsure if I would be allowed to take my camera in! I chose not to... and I'm a bit bummed that I didn't as we were in pretty good seats!

*sigh*

But on Saturday we went to Bulla to check out the Easter Dog Show.... these people take their sport seriously... I couldn't get past taking lots of cute and cuddly photos of the puppies... and tried to get one at least of what dog showing is all about!! This gorgeous Afghan required quite a lot of grooming prior to the show ring!

With no other sporting event on nearby... I chose to use a second photo from my whippet racing club.

This is of one of our new racers 'Magnifico', he's being held up by his 'dad' to watch what's going on!!

I am loving everyone's photos, and am enjoying the challenge! Some are far harder than others!!

MnDM

Sport ~ by Taylah.

Lucky for me, the theme fell over the Easter long weekend, when I had plans to go camping down the river with family and friends. And for us, whenever there is water, there is sport. Knee boarding, skiing, wake boarding, wake skating and tubing all weekend long.

I ended up taking well over 200 photos! But it wasn't without its challenges of being tossed around the boat, constantly avoiding the massive splashes and dodging heads, ropes and boat spray. But it was actually a lot of fun!

Here's three of my favorite images from the weekend. 

I must admit, shooting the guys on the tube was so funny. Their facial expressions were just hilarious. 

See you all again in two weeks! 

Sport by Kristen

So this theme was announced and instead of going eek, I went excellent! We had tickets to the opening game of the AFL season, perfect, or so I thought.

What I can tell you is a 200mm lens is nowhere near long enough to get photos of activity on the field, unless perhaps you are sitting on the fence line. Night games also mean bumping the ISO right up as I don't have a wonderful fast zoom (the f2.8 70 - 200 is HIGH on my wishlist but low on my priority list) so mot of the pics are grainy. Sitting in the back rom of the tier means crowd shots are limited too - there are a lot of backs of heads.

I ended up deciding to go for the colour and atmosphere given that the pictures of players look like ants. So here are the best 3 of a very ordinary but interesting effort.

Starting them young:

Avid supporter

Full House

Retrieving - It's a Sport!

Ok, so I had plans to shoot something exciting like AFL, lacrosse, mountain bike racing or polo.... Sadly I couldn't find any events and as usual life got in the way!!

However I did get a chance to shoot some retrieving at a training day, here are my three fav shots from that day.

Sports Photographer?

Okay, I had vague aspirations, but now I can officially cross Sports Photographer as a prospective career off my list! A shame really as I think I'd enjoy it given the opportunity to really let my inhibitions go.

Anyway, so other than my back-up plan of Canine Frisbee (aka throwing the frisbee for the dog to watch land then unenthusiastically retrieve for me ... Lotus doesn't take to the pressure very well) ... I made zero concrete plans, so when I was at the beach on the final warm day of the Summer (well you know, early Autumn) and saw some aspiring surfers I thought this has to be it!

So this guy was obviously still in the learning phase. I've seen enough surfing on telly to see his stance was all wrong, and seriously if there is one sport out there that I like it's surfing, I genuinely enjoy watching it (especially when the cameras go right in with the surfer, and those giant wave riders, so cool!) I can really appreciate where they are coming from too, the serenity yet power of the ocean, and in the last hour of light for the Summer (day) well it's something else :-)

and yes, he popped right off his board in the next frame :-)

Cheers

Announcing Theme Six: Sport

How awesome was theme five: abstract?  Beautiful & interesting images by all!  

Now we're going to head in an entirely new direction:

Meagan has chosen Sport
Shooting runs from 18 Mar - 31 March inclusive
Images post on 01 April 2013

Time to get out and about!

Theme 5: Abstract - Tanya

I have to admit this was my least inspired theme to date, but it's good to get out of your comfort zone. I gave it a bash and these are my results :)


My first is the sort of image that pops into my mind when I hear abstract, and reminds me of a painting I saw at the Tate Modern in London years ago. It's a very close shot of the base of a cup.

Blue




Next was a fluke shot as the wind blew just as I took the shot and everything went a bit blurry and weird, but I like how it came out.




And my final shot is a backlit leaf.




Hope you enjoy these and I'm looking forward to the next theme :D

Tanya

Abs tract

I enjoy abstract photography! In the past my efforts have been for the most part opportunistic or accidental, and my favourites concentrated around water ... the beach or river using light as the primary inspiration. It seems I didn't think of that until the last few days when I no longer had the time to do anything about it. I did get Saxon (gsd dog) out to the beach multiple times this past fortnight and at a suitable times with camera, but like I said, did not have my abstract hat on. Regardless this first shot was from one of those beach trips :)

The 2nd and 3rd images comes straight from a concerted effort to capture abstract ... seriously what is it about trying to capture an image and not being able to, but when you aren't even thinking about it, you get it? I'm realising quickly here, that I'm really not that much chop at taking photos for a specific purpose ... anyway ...

again, hope you enjoy!