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.

Photos of the Week - Week 41

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 41, Hands of Time

Photo by Debra Russo

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Debra says:

I switched my photo theme to "time worn hands". I dislike the look of my hands. They are discolored from blood thinners, they constantly have cuts on them because my skin is so thin that even rubbng hard against a surface causes bleeding. They are covered with small white scars from some of the worst cuts. When I have pictures taken of me, I photoshop my hands whenever possible. I once thought I hated my hands, but I don't. How can you hate the hands that rocked the cradle, that soothed the sick, that planted the garden? Despite having arthritis my hands are still strong enough to hand sew, hand quilt and do my much loved sashiko stitching. I can still do everything I could when my hands were young, except maybe open the pickle jar myself! The item I am stitching in the photo is a boro scarf I started at the last quilt show in Houston before Covid. I think it's time to keep that needle in my hands and get it finished.

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 41 - Macro

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 41, Pep Ventosa

Photo by Peter Hall

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Peter says: 

I enjoyed this excercise and created some images, mainly trees and flowers, that I am happy to keep. I have chosen this image for this challenge as it showed a more defined view of the brief. Eight images were used and taken at the outdoor area of a cafe in a small country town where we stopped for lunch.

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 41 - Sunrise

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 41, Sunrise

Photo by Beth Colins

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Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 41, Sunrise

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:

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Critique Group Challenge:

Week 41, Hands of Time

Photo by Ricky Tims
from the 2022 Critique Group

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Ricky says:

This is 10 photos of my antique clock. Each one rotated a bit when taken then each layer in Photoshop had an opacity change. Similer to what we do for Pep Ventosa. I put one layer on top that had more "clock face". Cropped Square - then flattened. Then I used the Sperize filter to warp it all.

Photos of the Week - Week 42

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 42, Double Exposure

Photo by Carol Freda

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Carol says:

This is an in-camera double exposure of the treetops outside my front window. (I overlaid the tops of bare trees with another view of ones with fall colors capturing the setting sun. I also added a dreamscape.) I then combined this in PS with two geese flying in for a landing at the lake near me.

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 42 - Framed within a Frame

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 42, Framed within a Frame

Photo by Laurie Lee

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Laurie says: 

"Van Gogh in America", a fabulous exhibition in Detroit Institute of Arts. This photo was taken with high ISO because of the limited lighting inside the exhibition room. With lots of noise in the image, I thought it is a good candidate for a black and white photograph. There are multiple frames here, the entrance, the square board in the center, and the exhibitaion visitors. I could have had a tighter crop if I have chosen a different focus. I don't own Topaz at this time so I used the oil style filter in PS to advance my image. Here is the result after several versions. I masked off Van Gogh's painting in my photo so it didn't get affected by the black and white and oil style filters. Forever Van Gogh!

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 42 - Smile

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 42, Smile

Photo by Carol Huston 

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Critique Group Challenge:

Week 42,  Double Exposure

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:

Photos of the Week - Week 40

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 40, Fading Beauty

Photo by Julie Titus

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Julie says:

Mold and dehydration contrast the still vibrant colors. Golden hour light, tripod for long exposure, minimal LR edits

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 40 - Do Over

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 40, Panorama

Photo by Don Watts

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Don says: 

The Mexican Trestle outside of Cloudcroft, NM. Parts of what's left of the Cloudcroft rail line.

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 40 - Doors

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 40, Doors

Photo by Linda Rowberry

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Linda says :

I stumbled upon this cute little place with several different doors. Each door had a number over it so I figured they were individual spaces. Out of all the photos that I took, this door was my favorite, mainly because it is red, which is my favorite color! I added an oil painting filter from the BeCasso app

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