Submission: Ducks Away

Didn't mean to take a photo of a duck, but when I was out and about this one obligingly decided to pose for me. Luckily my camera was pointing in the right direction at the right time, for a change! And no, I didn't do anything to it, to make it do this (as one person suggested!).

Submission: Cold War

Cold War
Originally uploaded by mafiu

Last weekends assignment was a 'Photo from the bank holiday weekend' type of assignment - Well here is my attempt. This is a Royal Observer Corps Listening post on the outskirts of Middleton Stoney.

Slightly photoshoped to give an HDR effect as the sky was lovely.

One day I'll photoshop it properly.

I took some pictures inside the bunker as well - but these weren't anything more than snaps with on camera flash. See them on flickr here.

Submission: Homage, if only..

if only..
Originally uploaded by mafiu

Here I am, my version of this picture here.

I didn't have a round table, or a lamp I could use as a light, so I ended up using a ... well that would spoil it. I was trying to go for the specific effect of the original, but put things in slightly different positions.

The hardest part of this was getting the camera to auto focus when I wasn't in the chair. In the end I thought I had the frames in the bag, packed everything away, got changed, (bearing in mind I was doing this at around 2am so I wouldn't get stared at) and moved the furniture back into position... Only then did I port the pictures back into the computer and realise I was slightly blurred... Dang.. So at this res its not too bad, and theres a lot of Photoshop twiddling to try and sharpen the image, as well as desaturated it slightly.
Quite happy with it - but this wasn't the exact one I wanted to do and like yerself this was a lot harder than I thought. Least I could get away with being a bloke in this one!

A different picture, based on an idea by McNeney, is here.

Submission: Homage

I found this assignment a lot more difficult than I initially thought. I think it was because I found it hard copying someone's work, who obviously puts a lot of thought into the reason behind each photo. As I didn't have that same connection, I found it difficult to replicate. I decided not to copy the photo completely as I wanted it to be my own interpretation; so the hands are different, as is the angle of the photo. It was quite tricky getting a pose, which looked natural, and even this looks a bit staged. The Photoshop tweaks were minimal; just a slight adjustment of levels and then a colour cast; sepia plus a little bit of red, as that is the colour of the fabric, which I also wanted to convey. I also wanted to keep more detail in the hands; they seem a little burnt out in the original (but that could just be my screen).

Assignment. Homage

Find a picture on flickr by the following photographer:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maryannemc/

Now produce another photo in homage of the first . Try and capture something in the original and replicate it. Photoshop is allowed but not to add elements of the source image into the new image.

Deadline Tuesday 25th March 23:59

Submission: Open

Holetown is one of our favourite haunts in Barbados and full of chattel houses. Each one is painted a different colour combination, and I decided to take photos of every single one to make up a series of images. I took all the photos just straight on and then cropped and rotated them in Photoshop just to make them more interesting. I like this one as the lighting is interesting and the leaves add a bit of interest.

Submission: Tree

Was trying to get a good imageof a banana tree, but it proved to be really difficult. The tree was quite untidy, and my lens just isn't wide-angled enough to get a good photo. In the end I decided to concentrate on small details, in particular leaves and also the bunches of bananas. Little light was reaching the bananas, so that didn't really work either, but the sun was shining through the leaves, and looked quite effective. I like the way this one ripples in the top left corner.