Coffee Mug Perspective

Posted on January 29, 2016 by shepherdesswrites

Perspective

Posted on January 25, 2016 by rosie333

Assignment Week 4: Perspective.

This week’s assignment is to shoot the same subject several times from lots of different angles.

0704151734b

0704151734c

You can use a zoom lens if you wish, but it is best to actually move yourself around the subject. Above, below, behind, near, far, etc etc. Different kinds of lighting are ok, but we will have a separate assignment for light another time. The goal is to look at a subject from as many different perspectives as possible. This is a classic photography class assignment, so if you’ve taken a course before you’ve probably done this very thing. However, I personally think it is so important that I use this exercise myself frequently and it has yielded great results. Ultimately you may interpret this assignment however you wish.

You may interpret this assignment however you wish. If you are participating in the 2016 Photo Assignments please let me know by posting in the comments! I would love to stop by wherever you have photos on line and see them!

If you are sharing elsewhere too please use ‪#‎photo2016perspective

The Tree’s Hands

Posted on January 25, 2016 by rosie333

Trees

Posted on January 17, 2016 by shepherdesswrites

Assignment Week 3: trees
One of my favorite things in the world is a tree! Trees are fascinating, patient and ever white leaves changing subjects. You may interpret this assignment however you wish, but my suggestion is that you find a tree you like and photograph it at different times of the day and from different angles, as a whole and in parts. However, you have no obligation to do this–you may do whatever you wish, even interpreting “tree” however you wish.

If you are sharing elsewhere too please use ‪#‎photo2016trees‬

Red

Posted on January 11, 2016 by shepherdesswrites

Assignment Week 2: Red

IMAG1745 Crimson, wine, cherry, brick, fire, coral, watermelon, magenta, cerise, lava, maroon, burgundy, strawberry.

Red dresses, red skies, red faces, red lights, red stop signs.

This week’s assignment is to look for red. It is the color that the human eye is most drawn to and will usually pick out first in a picture. But red can also be a symbol, too and can evoke and communicate emotion very well.

Brightness

Posted on January 5, 2016 by shepherdesswrites

#photo2016bright

Bright

Posted on January 4, 2016 by shepherdesswrites

Assignment Week 1: Bright

There are several things that go into making a good photograph…and by good I mean one that you like. Composition, movement or stillness, depth of field, just to name a few. The most significant may be light itself. This week’s assignment is to look for brightness. At this time of year, the light in the world grows brighter every day. Where do you see it? Where is it absent? What and who are looking for the bright light?

You may interpret this assignment however you wish. If you have any questions, please let me know! Happy shooting!

1229150943a-01

late december 2015 back yard

Stealing Time

Posted on January 2, 2016 by shepherdesswrites

Happy New Year to one and all!

This year I am beginning a new project: The 2016 Photo Assignment project.

There are many advocates for creating art assignments for yourself, but I think photography in particular is geared towards “assignments”. Working in the photo industry for many years, I printed innumerable vacation shots, holiday photos, graduation documentation snaps, and birthday photographs. And, of course, wedding photos too. If you have a camera, most of the time you think of it in relation to taking snapshots of an event, documenting a moment in time, or a place you have visited all of which are to be able to recall the moment or moments in the future and give images to yourself to renew your memories.

This is an honorable use of photography! It is part of what has made this a medium that is accessible to nearly everyone. At this point, virtually all cellphones come equipped with a camera along with tablets and the increasingly inexpensive cost of having a simple point and shoot if you wish. So, with this ready access to photography equipment, why not send ourselves on assignment to photograph not just those proscribed events but the whole of life.

Sam Abell, one of my favorite photographers, quoted Virginia Woolf in the title of his book, Stay This Moment. “If one does not lie back and sum up and say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one’s gain, dying? No: stay this moment. No one every says that enough.”-Virginia Woolf diary entry, New Year’s Eve 1932.

Stay this moment. That is, largely speaking, what people are doing when they pick up their camera. Stay with me so I will remember. Stay with me so I may share it. Stay with me so that I will never lose this place, these people, these things. Stay with me so that the story this moment contains will go on and live forever.

Stay this moment, because this moment is a slice of time.

If what we are photographing is our cousin’s wedding or a friend’s silly dancing or a sleeping dog or bare winter tree limbs or any other moment of life, we are stealing time.

I invite you to join me and a small group of friends on this 2016 Photo Assignment project. Each Monday an assignment will be posted. You may interpret that assignment however you wish. Feel free to share links to your photos in the assignment post.

The goal of this project is simply the project itself; a practice of seeing and stealing time.

Also, a note on a minor detail, I have merged several blogs under one profile, so it may appear that another person is posting, but it is still the same me.