There hasn’t been much activity on this website for a long while. Life has gone on, events have occurred and I’ve not had the opportunity to be out with my camera and much less edit and upload photos. However Fortuna has been smiling on me and I am now looking at something that has the potential to be a massive new chapter in my life, essentially I could be going to University as a mature student to study Photography, or rather Photojournalism and Documentary, to be precise. This is huge to me as I haven’t actually got any qualifications higher than a GCSE and up until this point, I thought I would have to do A Levels (or equivalent) prior to University. It was only while attending a University open day with my partner, Emma, that I found out that as a mature student I don’t technically need UCAS points. So getting in is not the same as younger people wanting to go, awesome! To tell the full story; Emma is wanting to go back to Uni’ to do a Photography course, I went along for support and we got talking to one of the lecturers and the conversation ran around to the point where we both have the potential to attend the same course together.
Now enter Emma with her brilliant idea of a 52 week challenge. We have a fair amount of time before we plan to start the Degree so in that time we’re engaging in said challenge, or ‘challenges’ as we’re doing two simultaneously. The idea is simple, a theme is given and you then have one week to create and post the image. The challenges we’re following have been set by Dogwood Photography, links below;
https://dogwood.photography/index.html
https://dogwood.photography/52weekchallenge.html
https://dogwood.photography/52weekchallenge2017.html
So in this post, I’m going to be updating and posting our pictures along with the theme. I will explain a little about my thinking in creating my images and be placing the newest week at the top of the page. We are more than happy to receive opinions and constructive criticism. Feedback is good!
Here is a link to Emmas blog to see what she has written about her images;
https://occupationalobservations.wordpress.com/
Righty-tighty! Its the end of yet another week and this one has been a belter when it comes to photos. I feel I’ve outdone myself with one particular theme, speaking of which our two themes are Fantasy and Soft.
Fantasy; This shot is supposed to be inspired by something fantastical. After a little research I came up with the idea of a Marionette coming to life and controlling itself – a Marionette could never control itself so that is the fantasy right there. A great idea but how to show it in one picture? How about like this?
Soft; I put quite a lot of effort into the fantasy shot and I seem to have let the soft picture fall a little by the wayside. I feel a little let down in myself but I’m happy with the shot that I have, its Jazzy cat. The softness should be fairly self explanatory.
Here are Emma’s pictures, I think she’s done very well once again this week.
Week 20! So this week Emma & I have taken an executive decision and are not creating two images. The one we’re omitting – completely, we’re not coming back to it – is an editing challenge involving swapping the sky. Emma’s reasons are that she knows how to do that, and should she ever need to do it can. It’s not something she can learn from in terms of the 52 week challenge. For me, it goes against my values of photography as a whole. I strongly dislike changing an image to show something that wasn’t there in the first place, if I want a different sky I will wait until I have it physically above my head. Simple. We also had to create a Nightscape – We have had a go at this one.
Nightscape; Our brief was a landscape at night. We took a drive out, found a viewpoint overlooking some city lights and set a tripod up to get some long exposure shots. It seems that we both had mixed results. The majority of my shots were just full of blur and completely unusable, although I’m happy with the shot I’m presenting now. I know it is definitely a first attempt and that I have a lot more to learn about shooting at night.
And this is Emmas shot.
Week 19, a little late but I think we can all agree that I’m doing better than other weeks. We had to tackle a “messy” portrait first up then shoot something to do with our surroundings. Fun was had.
Messy Portrait; With this shot we had to make a mess and have fun doing so, I had an idea for this and feel I hit the mark pretty close. The initial idea was something you might expect on an album cover, mixed with a story of someone on a night out and not having a great time. Emma & I shared a model again this week as we had pretty similar ideas – how can you make a person look a mess? – ruined make up! I’m really pleased with my shot, I feel I perfectly hit both the brief and my initial idea. Drawing the colour out of Emma herself also adds to the impact of the image.
Surroundings; Now the brief technically stated “Backyard”, I live in a ground flat which has a front door that opens onto a road. I have no backyard, so I decided to open it up to the area around me. Where do I spend a lot of time? My workplace? Yes, and I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from there of late, however, I couldn’t find anything that I either haven’t already shot or lept out at me as being a good image. So I looked closer to home. I spend a lot of time at my PC desk, so I set up a selfie of me doing what I enjoy. I think it worked out well, although perhaps I could have swapped focal points and had the monitor in focus and myself not. Thoughts?
And again, Emma has knocked the ball out of the park with her shots this week – I really like what she’s produced.
This is Week 18! – The temptation to write Sparta there is quite high… For once both of us had both of our photos in on time, although the both of us ran right up to the weekend without the foggiest idea of what we wanted to shoot. Our themes are Purple and Texture, more info below.
Purple; Our shots needed to have taken some inspiration from the colour Purple here. I spent a long while trying to find something purple and my idea came to me at work. I like my result although I feel I could perhaps do it better if I could do a reshoot with a tripod, a little more time and good lot more light.
Texture; Again, this should be a self-explanatory theme, however, I found it quite difficult to execute. I would have liked to do a nice macro shot of a Cotswold stone wall, pump up the clarity and colours. This did not come to fruition because of a lack of nice light outside. Instead, I took inspiration from a sweet treat on the office table at work.
Emmas shots hereafter!
Week 17: This week we had another go at some portraiture and landscapes. We’re getting technical with the portraiture with yet more lighting techniques, this time around, Loop Lighting. While the Landscape was to be an Urban example.
Loop Lighting; Loop Lighting is a method of setting lights up so that you get a small shadow of the subject’s nose on their cheek. This shadow shouldn’t meet the shadow of the cheek and should be shot with the Key light set at a specific angle from the camera.We were going to a family event and Emma’s dress reminded me of the “We can do it poster”, so I decided I could try to recreate it.
Urban Landscape; This brief was relatively simple. A Landscape taken in a city or with Urban vibes. This is a shot I created earlier in the challenge for the Panoramic brief, however, chose a different one at the time.
And lastly; These are Emma’s shots.
Righty-o! I’ve been fairly poor with keeping up to date with images but I am finally caught up, nearly. Maybe. Hopefully. I’ve got two weeks of imagery to publish so I’ve kept the order of display and first up is week 16; Leading lines and Movement then week 15; Hard and Metal.
Leading Lines; Inspiration for this came to me at work. We had a flurry of snow and this is the view from the outside door of the plant room, I liked the way the snow faded out under the roofline and combined with the barely visible parking lines and curb. I thought it fit the bill of lines that draw the eye.
Movement; This needed to be a portrait that somehow showed movement in some form. My first idea was something that involved heavy editing, a swivel chair and a low shutter speed. It would have been quite complex to capture and then more-so to edit. So I have shelved the idea for now (I want to get it at some point) and raided my files. This is a shot from boxing day that I initially didn’t like but now I’ve looked at it with different eyes, I think that the slight blur and her pose make you feel the movement moments before and after the shutter closed.
These are Emma’s images; I love the leading lines, very outside the box.
Hard; Yet more inspiration was taken from my workplace for both of this week’s shots. You may be excused for questioning what this image is and then again when you find out that it is in fact water! It is the salt drum in the plant room, we fill it with water and salt to soften the water. It’s Hard Water. Which I feel quite smug about for pushing the limits of this brief.
Metal; A view I see several times a day but have never noticed. I took the picture on my mobile phone and had a play with the built-in filters and created this. Not bad for a device designed for telecommunications and not photography! I won’t explain further as to why it matches the ‘Metal’ brief.
These are Emma’s pictures, interesting points of view.
New pictures, just in! This week we had something a little easier to accomplish than last week. Panning and a Zoomed in Landscape.
Panning; Panning is the art of moving the camera while the shutter is closing to create a sense of movement in the shot. It’s quite difficult to pull off as there is a lot that can go wrong, this shot was taken at the Dulverton Farmers Hunt Boxing day Meet last year, I didn’t specifically take it for the challenge, but it was taken within the challenges timeframe and fits the brief – why not use it!?
Zoomed in Landscape; This is a landscape but not a traditional one, it needed to have an element of being close to the subject. This, like the other, wasn’t taken this week but I instead delved back into my catalogue from the duration of the challenge. I had real trouble choosing a shot for this one, however, I’m pleased with what I finally decided on.
These are Emma’s shots. I really like them both, her Panning image was a fluke but knocks the brief out of the park. As for her Landscape, its really outside of the box, which I also very much approve of – why follow the norm when you can ride the ragged edge of the brief.
A new week, a new year and a new set of images. I’m a little late with this post for a couple of reasons, primarily because we’ve been trying to meet the description of the briefs. This week we had to deal with a High Key Portrait and a shot taken in the Golden Hour. Now, while both are relatively simple to achieve, we had some level of difficulty doing so. A High Key Portrait is an image shot with a very bright white background and very little shadow, it was developed for when screens couldn’t display high contrast but is now more a stylistic choice. It is really only achievable with either studio lighting or a really very sunny day – neither of which we have right now. So we are postponing this image until such time when we can do it justice.
Golden Hour; The Golden Hour is the hour immediately after sunrise and before sunset, during this time the suns light has t0 pass through more of the earth’s atmosphere so is softer and has a slight reddish hue. Heres mine and Emma’s offerings:
Happy Christmas one and all! Another week down and time for another update. This week we’re working with the themes of Orange and Transport, I thought I was going to struggle with these themes but it turned out that I had a lot of fun and I think I’ve done fairly well!
Up first; Orange! I’m really pleased with this image, not least because Emma said it’s her favourite one I’ve taken so far (yay!) but also because I didn’t think it would be that good. I’ve said before that I don’t like set up shots, it’s not my forte and I’m just generally not interested. My initial plan for this shot was going to be Emma modelling her blindingly bright orange swimsuit, however, we didn’t really get an opportunity to do such a shoot and she also used it in her image – so I thought I’d do something else. I came up with this idea after some internet based inspiration. I’ve got some areas in the shot that I’m not pleased with so I know how to improve it, however, I feel that this is more reflective of my personality than some of the almost clinically clean still life shots that exist.
Transport; This shot I had a much harder time trying to bring in to existence. I had an idea of doing a portrait of a horse – a little outside the box, maybe – but I lack access to such a model. So instead I went for a walk around Bourton and snapped this. When I saw it, I instantly envisioned a selective colour black and white shot. As with all my shots, I know how I could potentially improve it, but I like this result so see no need to change it.
At this moment in time, I only have Emmas Orange shot, I will endeavour to update when I get her next image. I like it, she is playing with Macro photography by the looks of things.
Sunday is update day! This week we had to work with reflections shown in a landscape and discover how to edit split tone into our images. I’ll be honest, I found that I was somewhat lacking in inspiration this week. I had a couple of ideas but very little in the way of time to implement those ideas, in the end, Emma suggested I go for a walk into Bourton and catch the Christmas lights in the river. I then rummaged through some of my old images to see what I could find.
Reflective Landscape; This is what I took on my walk into Bourton, I’m pleased with my result because I may have forgotten that this was the Landscape shot and edited it for split tone. I think it captures Bourton in its festive guise, I like it.
Split Tone; This was taken a long time ago at the beginning of the challenge, it was a difficult decision to make between this and another. So I deferred to Emma’s choice of the two. This particular shot was taken at the tail end of the golden hour, however, a heavy cloud had covered all of the nice light. It was also shot at a fairly long distance and so my lense forced the aperture to be quite high, this in combination with the high ISO needed to get the shot balanced with a semi-decent shutter speed (handheld) meant that it was quite grainy and darker than I would have liked. With the split tone editing, I boosted the central colours of the image, the greens and the pink.
A little late with week ten, but yesterday was a snow day so I feel its acceptable to do nothing on such days. The themes this week were an Environmental Portrait and a to play with Perspective.
Environmental Portrait; we were asked to shoot a Portrait that shows someone or something in their natural habitat or environment. Originally I wanted to do a self-portrait where I’m sat at my PC with Lightroom open, I have that shot, however, I’m not over the moon with it. So… A wild Emma appears!
Perspective; I wanted to play with a twisted perspective ‘water wall’ style image. We had a lot of fun with this, after hours at my workplace trying different poses and angles. Then at home in post-production, attempting to make something usable. Ultimately we learned a lot from the experience. For one; it ain’t easy! The many attempts at each angle, figuring the lighting, trying not to dunk my camera into the water. I feel I can do much better on a second attempt, as I could only access the pool for photography after closing time it meant that it was dark outside so we had to rely on the lighting within the pool hall – which are ok, but not great. I have now worked out what I need to create a better image the second time around but that’s the exact reason we’re doing this challenge – its a learning experience.
These are Emmas shots for this week;
Week nine, coming in hot! This week we were shooting Shadows and Still Life.
Still Life; This is something I’ve never attempted before so it was truly out of my comfort zone. I feel I lack the environment to get a really good shot but I had fun playing and I like my result.
Shadows; This brief wanted us to utilise a lack of light to create our image. I had an idea and got Emma to model for me however I wasn’t happy with it so we abandoned, I ended up using an image I took last week when we visited the We The Curious in Bristol. We found an exhibit that projected different types coloured lights onto a screen, you could stand inside it and see multiples of your shadow in different colours. I forget exactly what it was showing, but we had a lot of fun with it and I caught this image.
These are Emmas images for this week;
Sunday means update time! Week eight is here and I have some pictures to show. Our briefs for this week were One Shot and Panoramic Landscape.
One Shot; This brief leads us to imagine we’re shooting on film and have one frame left on the last roll. We have one chance to get the image we want and it has to be perfect. This was a ‘fire and forget’ snapshot I took while we were trying to get something for the other image. I then went to town with the editing to get an old and forgotten film-like finish, I feel like I got the result I wanted.
Panoramic Landscape; I didn’t really get the shot I wanted for this, but I’m happy with what I have. I ended up going for a cityscape of Bristol and cut out the unwanted sky and foreground, I then edited it in a similar feel for the mood of my previous shot.
As yet, I don’t have Emmas shots – I will update when I have those.
Seven! – Imagine that shouted by Len Goodman. Yes, its Sunday, on week seven of the photo challenge. This week Emma and I are working to the themes of Faceless Portrait and Something Forgotten.
Faceless; For this, I enlisted the help of my friend and colleague Vicki. My thinking was that if I intend on doing photography as a career I won’t have Emma as a model all the time, so l should probably get some experience directing someone. As Vicki is setting herself up as a Personal Trainer the shots taken serve as a sample for some promotional images which we have agreed to do in the future. Check her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/vfisherfitness/. The brief for the image is pretty much as it sounds, show a story without showing persons face. For this, I thought a gym based shot with the weight blocking the face would be good.
Something Forgotten; This brief was a little vague, so I took it and twisted it to something I’m familiar with. I read the brief and thought “What do I know of that gets forgotten?”, my first thought was some abandoned building or ruin, but getting such a shot this week could have been logistically impossible. So I turned my attention to my workplace – I’d taken the first image at work, why not figure something out for Forgotten? This is what I came up with – hopefully, it is self-explanatory.
These are Emma’s shots from this week.
Its week six already! I’ll be honest now, this week I’m presenting a disappointment and a picture I’m really proud of. Our themes were Candy and (Not) Candy, so similar but the second half was designed to be harder to find a subject.
Firstly; Candy. Now this one we were allowed to get creative and the subject is some sort of sweet confectionary. I have seen videos on social media about laying Skittles out on a plate and pouring hot water over them. This creates a pattern as their sugar coating dissolves in the water and is meant to be a fun “experiment” for children. As I; 1) am a child, 2) like Skittles, and 3) liked the patterns it made in the videos, I thought it would be fun to try. I’m not pleased with my results. I should have used a plain white background, plate and taken multiple attempts at shooting the setup. As it turned out, my first few shots were mostly out of focus or had disappointing backgrounds and my final few shots the Skittles had dissolved too much. This is the best of the bunch, I am not happy with it but I do know how and where to improve. The reason I’m posting and not getting a better image is to prove that not everyone is perfect and that photography isn’t easy – we get many many shots that should never see the light of day!
Secondly; (Not) Candy. This brief was similar in the first that we had to take inspiration from something sweet and candy-like but we weren’t allowed to shoot any actual candy. I’m pulling a little bit of a stunt with this one in that this image was not taken this week. It was taken at the beginning of the challenge and meant for Rule of Thirds. I ended up not using it as the vision I had wouldn’t translate into postprocessing – I was trying and failing to get on with Photoshop. This week I successfully navigated Lightroom and created this. I won’t explain much about it, it should be fairly obvious where the ‘sweet’ connection comes in.
After seeing Emma’s images for this week, I feel well and truly out-done! Shes met the challenge brief perfectly.
Sound the drums! Week five is upon us! … or gone past without an update. So, yeah, we both managed to overrun with the fifth week but fear not we have images and we are uploading a day late. This, or last, weeks challenges were Black and White Landscape and a Ten Shot series.
Black and White Landscape; With this one I’m stepping away from the typical landscape shot, I don’t know if this could even be called a landscape. I like the shot though and I’m confident in my decision as the brief asked for a high contrast shot, so I feel it is contrasting against what many people to be a ‘Landscape’.
Ten Shot series; now this isn’t quite what it sounds like, its a lot more behind the scenes and I actually only present one image. So the brief asked for me to take Ten shots of a single object from multiple angles, focal lengths and distances, then present my favourite image. I have several favourites and originally wanted to group them together in a collage, however, I felt I was stepping away from the challenge with the other shot this week so I’ve elected to present the one I like the most.
And as always, these are Emmas shots;
It is week four! The themes for this week are Portrait – specifically headshot and Telling a story with Mirrors.
Firstly, Headshot; This was quite a difficult choice for me. I had four images that I really liked, all of them I feel are worthy of being presented and I did consider putting them together in a series. In the end, I chose the shot that I was most drawn to. It was taken at Valley of the Rocks, we were a very long way from the other side of the valley to give a soft background and I placed Emma’s eye in the centre of the frame while also vaguely observing the rule of thirds. All told I feel it makes the most well-balanced picture.
We also had to tell a story with mirrors. This shot I love. I also feel it could have been done better, however, I’ve done the best with what I had and it also represents my ethos of what photography is. I had an idea in my mind, created the scene and took the shot – I then created my final image with as little editing as I could. I hate editing pictures, which links nicely with the choice of degree we’re looking at; Photojournalism and Documentary. To me, an image should not be manipulated so much that the final product is vastly different to the one in the camera. I could have made this image, or something similar, with almost any picture and the use of Photoshop. Cutting and editing shouldn’t really be required – even my double exposure portrait from week one could be done in camera. This picture was taken with a mirror in the frame, a wide angle to get both Emma and her reflection. Then I simply removed all distractions from the background by dropping the exposure on everything that I wasn’t in my mind’s eye.
And now for Emma’s pictures. We realised that we came up with roughly similar ideas for our mirror shots – completely unintentionally!
Week three is here! This week we have been tasked with Red and From the Land. I feel that I didn’t have much time to do the challenge this week, with work commitments and preparing to visit family at the weekend. So I got my pictures done and sorted by Monday, so in the usual Sam manner I’m releasing them today – Friday… yeah.
So without further ado; Red. This was taken on a walk around Bourton-on-the-Water, I originally wanted to do a selective colour image of the phone box and/or post box in the village. I wasn’t pleased with these images but noticed some flowers, which I cannot identify, and thought I could get a nice Macro shot. Be aware that this was taken outside, on a very windy day, handheld – not a perfect scenario for Macro!
From the Land; Now this was a fairly open subject matter. It could have been a landscape or something inspired by the land in general. My first idea was a still life of a potato, a look of disgust from Emma made me think better of the idea! So this image was taken while on a walk with Emma, I didn’t realise we would be going out so I didn’t have my camera with me, only my phone. Given a second chance, I feel I could produce a much better image but I am happy with what I have.
These are Emmas shots from this week;
Week two consisted of Landscape and Straight out of Camera. Emma and I went on a couple of photography walks to get our shots, I found the first one decidedly better than the second in terms of the images that I captured. My landscape is taken from Cleeve Common looking out over Cheltenham, I explored the Lightroom Presets and played with the settings a little, I feel that the end result is something a little surreal, brooding and heavy. A landscape that isn’t your typical landscape.
My landscape is taken from Cleeve Common looking out over Cheltenham, I explored the Lightroom Presets and played with the settings a little, I feel that the end result is something a little dark and heavy. A landscape that isn’t your typical landscape.
This next one is Straight out of Camera; this was again taken on that same walk around Cleeve Common and is a shot that I just really like. It was taken out of boredom while waiting for Emma to take a picture; she had climbed up onto a rock to get a higher vantage point and I snapped the shot. 
These are Emmas images for week two;
First up; Self Portrait. I feel I went in hard with this. I don’t much like editing and have only a limited knowledge of Photoshop so decided to test myself to start.
Up next; Rule of Thirds. I was having real difficulty trying to come up with an idea for this one, so while trying to set up a shot I was getting angry and wanted a self-indulgent milkshake. I opted for chocolate, justifying my decision with the thought of how satisfying it was to see the powder sinking down from the top. Then a lightbulb went off in my mind and I snapped this shot. It’s a little outside the box, but hopefully, the rule can be seen.
These are Emmas offerings to the challenge;
