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 :)