Country By Design’s Neighborhood

I'm taking this week's topic from Darren Rowe's weekly newsletter.  My rules are a little different.  Since we are getting into the busy time of the year...Holiday Season...you can use old photos or take new ones.  Take some photos of your pets, your neighbor's pets, your parent's pets, the school pets, or neighborhood pets.  Here is a link to Dareen's article on taking photos of pets  http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-photograph-pets.

Have some fun and dress up your pet or take a photo of a pet in an unusual place.  You can use photoshop to change the photo background or change the shape or position of the pet.  You can clone your pet or pets....anything goes this week...show me your creativity!

Boy we had a great turnout for the #78 Photo Quest on Diagonal Lines.  Thanks to Cap'n Stephel, Darcy, Yancunyong, Trailblazer, anthrogrrl, Maju and Spike for some really amazing photos!  I'm not sure the Trailblazer wanted in but I'm including her. 

For each person that posts to the quest I pick the one photo that I liked the best and that fit the Photo Quest the best.  Just because I pick one photo does not mean I dislike the others!  It isn't easy to pick one from each participant as the photos are so good!

I'm going to start with Spike as she was the first to post for this week's quest.  My favorite was the "Steve at the Reaper Miniatures factory looking like the kid in a candy store", photo.  Look at how all the toys on the wall form long, multiple lines drawing your eye right to Steve.  I also like the texture created by the toys and the fun way she used diagonal lines in the photo great job Spike!

Maju just took my breath away with her photo of Regent's Canal 02!  This is a BIG WOW photo!  Notice how the walkway, the trees, the reflection in the water pulls your eye right to the bridge.  The composition on this photo is wonderful with the bridge right at the ROT point!  In this photo even the light areas with no details, water without reflections and the sky pull your eye to the bridge.  Wonderful work Maju!!

Next was Antrogrrl and what a nice surprise that we get to see some of her "old archaeology photos for this challenge."  You made it hard for me to choose one photo as you had so many great ones this week.  I have to say I liked 2 snow tracks the best.  The tracks in the snow, the diagonal line of the plants, the mountains and the sky push your eye right to the furtherest point.  The angle of the photo and the diagonal lines give the photo a feeling of a never ending landscape.  The tracks in the snow tell the viewer the snow is fresh and the people in the vehicle where the first to see this landscape.  This photo tells a great story, super photo Antrogrrl!

Trailblazer posted two interesting photos to the Photo Quest Group.  My favorite was the first photo Ink-and-surf-jpg.  There are several diagonal lines in this photo.  The surfers arms, legs, the surf board and the surf all provide great diagonal lines.  I really liked the way we have two diagonal lines coming together with the surfer in the forground arms, forming one diagonal line and the surf board forming the opposite diagonal line.  The intersection of these lines draw your eye right to that point.  Nice capture Trailblazer!

Yan's many wonderful photo all with great examples of diagonal lines really caused me to stop and consider all the photos before I made my selection.  I really have to pick Photographers @Mt. Gomadan as I loved all the photographers lined up with their tripods to take photos of the fall colors.  This is a very fun photo full of color and lots of interest in what the photographers are doing and thinking about how each one is taking their photos.  Great photo Yan!

I pick Darcy's photo of her son playing the in water sprinkler as my favorite.  What a fun photo.  It makes me want to run in a sprinker too.  Here Darcy has framed her son with the diagonal lines of the sprinkler on either side.  This was a hard shot to get as she has the camera shutter slow enough to capture the sprinkler water in drops and the camera set fast enough to get a very clear shot of her son.  This is another photo that tells a story of Darcy's son enjoying his summer.  Love this one Darcy!

Last but not least are the photos from Cap'n Stephel.  Her photos are always full of personality.  You got to look at the snowman in the pumpkin patch!  The photo I liked best from her post is the first one of the trail.  The fence and the shadow of the fence give the photo a great sense of depth, distance and mystery.  She didn't tell us the whole story here as we can't see the end of the trail...we keep looking be we can't see that far as the trees cover our view.  Very nice photo Cap'n!

I was going through some photos I took at Tumacacri Mission a few weeks back and I saw a lot of photo with diagonal lines.  So I'm just going to post a couple for this quest.  For this one I changed it to black and white added some noise and artistic stuff and lighting.  The diagonal lines are the stones on the grave site.

Crossings II

Grave copy

I played a little more with the next photo.  I selected the church and didn't select the brick tower.  Then I changed the church to black and white, worked some on the contrast and brightness, added an artistic filter and erased the black and white from the top arch and the two diagonal columns.  By added color to the the diagonal lines I wanted to push the viewers eye up to the arch and the cross on top of the church. 

Tumacacri Mission Church I

Tumacacri Mission Church I

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In this photo the main subject the pots are in a diagonal line.  In the original photo the pots where in a dark shadow.  I cropped the photo then selected the shadow and lightened it and added saturation.  Then I selected the light wall that was too light, added contrast, darked the highlights and added saturation.  Now the shadow looks more like a stain or paint on the all and less like a shadow. 

Row Pots

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The last photos is of the columns supporting the covered over the walkway for the visitor's center.  In this photo the diagonal line formed by the columns draws the eye to the door. 

Yellow

Gees can you believe this is the 78th Photo Quest?  Seems like I started this just a few months ago.  I thank all the loyal members for all their great photos and for teaching me more about photography.

For this weeks quest lets look at diagonal lines and how they contribute to a photo.  You can use diagonal lines to draw to eye to your subject or the lines can be your subject.  The human eye natural views an image by going from left to right.  By placing a diagonal line from left to right you are using that natural view to your advantage by now drawing the eye to your subject.  Make it easy for the viewed to know what your subject is.

Can you look at your photos and know what the subject is?  Do you look for the subject of your photo in your view finder or LCD before you click the shutter?  Do you remember the rule of thirds?

Now that I've filled you with questions....here is this week's quest.  Take some photos using diagonal lines.  Photos can be any that you have taken in the last year.  If you can't find a photo with diagonal lines or can't find a subject with diagonal lines around use a photo software to make some lines.  No excuses this time. 

Here is a great article on diagonal lines  http://digital-photography-school.com/using-diagonal-lines-in-photography.  Any questions...please ask!  Take care and  have a wonderful week.

Yikes there were some very scary photos this week!  Thanks to all the folks that send in photos, it was so much fun to see what you were doing for Halloween.  I miss Halloween so much.  The department I worked the for last 9 years didn't do much of anything for Halloween.  Now that I'm retired well, it was even less.  We are too far out in the country to get trick-a-treaters so it was like any other day here.  Darn it...I did get to see some cute photos of my grandsons dressed up.

Back to the quest I didn't see a bad photo in the group and we had tons of photos this time.  Darcy made my job easy by posting only one photo, thanks so much girl.  Her photo of her daughter as Wednesday Adams showed tons of creativity.  Darcy's daughter played with the photo in photoshop to make it spookier!  Great work there.

Then along came Cap'n wow frozen pumpkin fields and a great jack-o-latern...amazing work on that.  My favorite was the jack-o-latern photo. Taking the photo at night gave it a real Halloween glow.

Next was Yan with his great photos of Halloween in Japan.  My favorite was the friend dressed as an alien...great capture in a dark bar.

Now it was Amy Sue...boy she made my job very hard with all her great photos!  Thanks for the great photos of the kids trick-or-treating downtown.  What a great place she lives that the merchants give out candy..keeping it safe for the kids...very nice!  It was so hard to pick a favorite...so I picked two.  I loved the pumpkin and  hunted house photo.  The low light gives the photo a very nice Halloween spooky feeling.  Then I really like the Halloween old photo of the two kids under the movie poster.  Nice work there with making the whole photo feel very old.

Wow then there was Metz....so many, many photos my friend.  I felt like I was there with you enjoying seeing how your children had so much fun. Of couse it helps that her kids are so cute!  So my favorite of all the photos was Halloween 048 with the red tree behind your daughter!  That was an amazing photo, loved the red leaves that matched your daughters outfit.  Nice work there!

Let's have some fun with this quest....show me your Halloween...make it scary, funny, magical, silly or spooky.  All photos must be taken during this quest and no limits to photo editing for this one.

For this quest push the limit on your camera and your editing software...have a ball and show us how creative you can be.  Keep in mind this is a family friendly group so nothing too gory or sexy.  Now go out and take some photos!

I learned a lot from this quest and from seeing the photos that were posted for this quest.  As Darcy said having the subject out of focus add some mystery to the picture.  Usually we try everything we can do to get a detailed crisp photo and in this quest it was just the opposite.

Now to this week's photos and the ones I liked the best.

For Darcy it is easy...her pumpkin photo is wonderful!  I loved that she used a Halloween theme and had some scary books in focus and the wonderful jack-o-latern out of focus.  Try as I might my eye still goes to the jack-o-latern and not the books that are in focus. 

On the photos that Realworld submitted I liked the third one the best.  The whole photo is out of focus but the lamp in the widow draws your eye into the photo and you just want to know more about the house, the room, the lamp.

The photos that Yan submitted were amazing!  I liked them all and he gave us a nice assortment of pink and white flowers in and out of focus.  The last photo of the multi-colored flower is my favorite.  I like that we only see 1/2 the flower and that only the center of the flower is in focus...it leaves me wanted to see more of the flower!

Great work all and thanks so much for posting your wonderful photos to this quest.  Hope to see you again next week.

I get a wonderful newsletter each week from Darren Rowse of the Digital Photograhy School.  Some weeks I don't read them until much later.  If you are interested in getting this great newsletter go to his website http://digital-photography-school.com/ and sign up.

In this weeks Tips Newsletter I was reading the article "Photography the Light Not the Land" and got the idea for this week's quest...taking a photo that is out of focus or not "tack sharp."  Here is the article with some great examples of out of focus photos http://digital-photography-school.com/out-of-focus-photos ...be sure and read his other article "Taking Unfocused Photos." 

Since I'm late in doing this quest, you have a week and two days to get some photos posted.  For this quest there are some different catagories and the photos must be taken during the run of this quest.

1.  Take one photo in focus and then one out of focus.  If you have the ability to put your camera on manual focus this isn't too hard...if you can't change to manual focus, then focus your camera on a nearby subject hold down the shutter button halfway then move your camera over to a scene with the many subject farther way.  If your camera allows set your ISO low 100 or 200 and your aperture (F stop) as high as you can in the 2-4 range.

2.  If your camera or your lens has a anti-shake function take one photo with it on and one with it off. 

3.  If you have a tripod, take one photo with the tripod and one handheld.

4.  Take a photo of a very near subject that is a distance from the background, use a wide or high aperture, focus only on the subject take a photo.  Now change to aperture to 9 or higher...post both photos.  If you can't set your aperture, change your auto setting from macro to landscape and see if that changes the focus.  This should give you an out of focus background know as bokeh go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh for a good description of what bokeh means.

5.  Now that you can take an out of focus photo on purpose let's get really creative and compose and take a very dreamy photo.  If you can take the same photo in focus and post both photos.

In the quest you should learn a little more about your camera..ugh you might have to get the manual out again...and the ability to take an out of focus photo when you want that effect.

Here is a photo I took that I really struggled to get in focus but the light was very low as it was in Mission San Xavier church.  I blurred the foreground by using a high aperture.  I think it was 4 and took the photo through some stair railing.  I think this photo works as the out of focus blur makes it look ghostly or spiritual. 

IMGP1150-Mary

Here is a great photo by Yancunyong of a sweet potato...the focus is very tight on the sweet potato and you can see a soft slightly out-of-focus lovely lady in the background. 

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 Here is a photo from a Flickr friend and she said I could add it to this quest as an example of out-of-focus photo.  Here is a link to her Flickr site to view more of her wonderful photos. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ohbydod/

Pumplkin

Again the variety of this week's photos was wonderful.  Check out the photos from Spike, Anthrogrrl and Yancunyong.  For some reason Cap'n's post didn't register on the Photo Quest and Realworld almost forgot to post his photos. 

Spikes photos of the local football team were great...do I hear a new career for Spike?  I have to go with the last photo of the team in black and white with the purple shirt and pants in color!  Fall is football in the USA and thanks to Spike we get a good view of the local sceen.

Anthrogrrl posted some terrific photos of the fall colors!  Her second photo titled uber-brillant is my favorite....The colors are so amazing.

Yan's actions shots gave us an idea of all the sports activities in Japan.  His last photo of the boys chasing the ball was my favorite...great composition (leaving room in front of the boys, ROTs), super action and the best colors!

Realworld's photo of the fall sky with all variety of colors was wonderful.  I pick his last photo with the purple filter or overlay as my favorite!

Now for Cap'n Stephel's post..I think her photo of the fall leaves and the snow are great.  My favorite is the first one where she has taken the black and white photo of the leaves and made an increadible frame for the color version of the photo.  I think is a wonderful and creative idea!  Now I want to try it...take a look and I know you will want to try it too!

Thanks all for posting so truly great photos again this week!

Here in my world we don't have a real fall or spring our seasons just gently roll from one to another, so I'd like to see yours!  Take some photos of your landscape or something that means Spring or Fall to you.  If there is something you do or eat that means Fall or Spring that works.  Once you have your best photos, take the photo and change something to make it more dramatic.

Ah the something is up to you but here are some examples.  Change the contrast and colors by adding a color photo filter or playing the color setting in your editing software.  Go for the dramatic effect on your photo, try adding layers of colors.  Try the photo in black and white and then paint in some of the original color by erasing the black and white layer to show the color layer. Cut out a part of your photo and put in on a different background.  Get those creative skills going and have some fun.  Please post the details of your photo...how it was shot etc....and what you did to change it.

Post the original and final best three photos. Thanks and get your camera out and show us your seasons.