Week 19: Joy of Childhood and Shoes

Assignment: Joy of Childhood

Think back on your childhood. What were the simple things that delighted you? Watch your own children. What little discoveries are they making while they play? Mudpies or stickball, tea parties or playgrounds, try to capture those childhood pleasures we forgot as we grew up. You can use this as a chance to practice children's portrait photography or use objects and/or places if there are no children available to you.
To me, when I look back, the joy of childhood encompass all the joys of not having care/responsibilities of an adult (of course when I was a child I had a different prospective). When you can go to the lake and Tarzan all day, or lay on the beach. When you can play when you want, eat when you want and sleep as much as you want. Or eat ice-cream as much as you want and have it all over your face:

It was hot, the ice-cream melted and now I look like a cat

Or when you are moving, and the whole house is boxes for a while and your toys are limited to just some that you love the most, until we move to the new house. You build a fort out of boxes and get into your world… another joy of childhood – you get to play in your own world:

My fort between the boxes with my favorite dolls

 And some face painting for every joyful day:

Challenge: Shoes

This week your photographic challenge is to take and share an image on the theme of ‘Shoes’.
Take any approach that you like with this topic:
     photograph your own shoes, or those of someone else.
     photograph shoes being worn or without feet in them.
     photograph 1, 2 or even a collection of shoes.
     photograph them in a location that gives them context or in a clean simple background
If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites with Tagging tag them as #DPSSHOES.

One of my favorite pictures took at a clown show (works a bit for the assignment of Joy of Childhood as well):

But this was taken long ago.

For this assignment, I had fabricate some rain and titled my shots as "Drying in the Sun":

A rough year:

Red shoes:

It's all in the shoes:

and in line with previous weeks... just some nice pictures from the week:

Week 18: Silhouettes and Toys

Assignment: "Silhouette" We all know what a silhouette is, a darkened featureless person or object in a picture. With the proper use of light, they can make striking images.
Here is a how to: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-photograph-silhouettes

I struggled with this one as I was looking to get a nice picture with a sunset/rise in the back ground... but now a days in this hemisphere it is either too late or too early for me... so here is what I came up with in the park:



Just walking with the spray of water illuminating the back



Reading in the park - sun at high noon

Sun behind book

Challenge: Toys.Your challenge this week is to take and share an image on the theme of ‘TOYS’.
While not everyone might have access to kids toys in their home – feel free to interpret the topic more broadly and photograph anything you consider to be your ‘toy’ – it might be a gadget, hobby or maybe you have a toy from your own childhood in the attic that you could dig out and photograph. Alternatively you might like to photograph some kids playing with their own toys. Just have fun with the topic – toys are for playing and so I hope to see some playful and fun images.


I had fun with this one… my daughter is 6 and I knew I could find some toys to play with… but just as I did, I realized most of the toys are in boxes – we are about to move and there are more boxes with toys. I first thought to incorporate some water and toys as my daughter love bath time (once she gets in – to get her in it’s a different story). But I was not getting any cooperation so I took a few “safari” shots”:

Food for the animals?

Going to get some more food

Then I found a bag full of birds… and decided to have some fun outside, as I remembered that our fire escape stairs are very rusty and could potentially have a nice effect on the pictures… so I played, but not having a tripod hindered me here and what I wanted to do, so here it is:

Bird on a wire?

with a friend

 

 

 

the whole crew

Then as I was walking to put them back in the bag, I saw the light from the window lighting up my daughters processes house and thought of some great captures:

Getting ready for the party

awaiting her prince by the rear window

while her prince shows up at the back door, her friends are ready for the party in the front

Then my daughter came in and brought all the princesses out, so we decided to line them up for a dance, but we don’t have a prince, so we satire it with an ogre

The lineup

we know who he is choosing, but what about the rest... well we found them a suitor as well

Going for Shilgee (snow white)?

He looks happy, and hungry

so happy he brought a friend

To top it all off – by this time my daughter fell of the chair, as she wanted to look at the line up and it was on top of tall boxes (to get the light right from the window)… so I had to give the ogar a chance at being a prince as he stuckout with the ladies:

Even the frog was scared, so we got a chameleon

To top it all off, this is my favorite "toy" to play with:

My lighting girl

and last, a nice shot from the weekend:

Week 17: Reflection and Zooming while shooting

Assignment: Zoom while shooting:

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/using-the-zoom-effect

Let's have a little fun this week creating a kind of special effect while shooting. You'll need a zoom lens for this one in order to create the effect right in your camera. No editing should be used to create it afterwards on your computer. See the link below for a good description on how to do this.

The assignment was to zoom while shooting... took many shots to try and get it right, finally choose this one.

The assignment was to zoom while shooting... took many shots to try and get it right..

 

Challenge: Reflection

This week your challenge is to photograph and share an image on the theme of ‘Reflections’
The theme opens up all kinds of possibilities – you might like to incorporate reflections off water (landscapes), mirrors, glass, metal…. or some other shiny object. Or perhaps you have a photo that is ‘reflective’ in some other more metaphorical way. It’s totally up to you. However you interpret it – use this challenge is a motivation to get out with your camera this weekend!

So I could use the obvious ones:

or some more interesting ones:

The sun finally shining, a little one, reflecting on how deep the puddle is... and watching herself in the mirror like reflection.

  

A rainy day at the dock. Shot under an umbrella. Reflecting on how nice it would be to take 16, 10 or 18 out for a spin - weather permitting

and just for fun... a reflecting thought?

and of course the picture hanging on top of this blog is also reflective ;-)

and I forgot this pretty one: