Photos of the Week - Week 45

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 45, Serene

Photo by Chris Maher

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Chris says: 

Sunday was my last marching band event of the year. Usually there is a band or two that has members lay on the ground and pretend to sleep. I thought that might have potential. The image itself didn't work well enough for me so I pulled it into PS and started playing around. I started to make a dreamscape, making a copy of the layer and bluring it. In playing with blend modes, I found Subtract gave an interesting outline but it was black with white lines, so I added an Invert layer. Now I had a nice pencil sketch look but it needed color, so I started picking out parts of the uniform and adding gradients with multiply blend to pick up the texture of the line drawing. I ended up putting the original image on top with low opacity to get the color on the face, hair and arms. While there isn't much serene about a marching band show, this worked for me. Plus now that the 20,000 photos I and my other photographer took this weekend have been edited and posted, it was a calming activity to pick one image and play with it for an hour. 

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 45 - Stuck in Place

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 45, Stuck in Place

Photo by Egídio Leitão

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Egídio says:  

For this week’s assignment, I chose to sit down in our backyard with a cup of coffee. I wanted to see if I could see unusual compositions I had not seen before. After one hour of sitting in the area I picked, I ended up with 42 images. I used two lenses for those photos: a macro lens and my go-to zoom lens. I think it was only after about 30 minutes since I began shooting that I began exploring unexpected compositions around me. The macro lens offered me a lot of flexibility because I could also use it for other non-macro subjects. As far as techniques, I had some shots emphasizing a line, two rectangles, abstracts, textures, and ICM. In the end, I had to trim my selections down to three plus the photo of the location. The photos I used were the following:
(1) A dry leaf sticking up in the rocks caught my eye. To emphasize its color, I desaturated everything else in that photo.
(2) This was a section of my coffee cup in the cup holder of the chair I was using. The cup's metal surface was reflecting my surroundings. I especially liked the earth tones and that small image of the world.
(3) Finally, I had to include one of the ICM creations. These Yaupon Holly trees were just twisted in the image I created.

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 45 - Colors November

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 45, Colors November

Photo by Mark J Towle

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Mark says:

 Enjoy November! - This is a picture of part of a fall display at Sugar Land Town Center. Enjoy the colors of November!!

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 45, Colors November

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:

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Critique Group Challenge:

Week 45, Serene

Photo by Ricky Tims
from the 2022 Critique Group

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Ricky says:

A dried yarrow in a wooden vase lit only by the candle. Hopefully moody and meditative.