Photo Project / Assignment

[Billy]

Basically, every once in a while someone comes up with an idea for a photo assignment for all the participants to complete....for example, go out and shoot a body of water at sunrise or sunset at focal length x, etc etc... that's just a quick example off the top of my head. Then everybody posts their pictures and we exchange ideas/tips/critiques. Anybody interested? Anyone? Beueler? Beuler? Maybe one assignment every couple of months (or more or less, depending on interest).

 

[darren]

I'm down.

-d

 

[JohnL]

Good idea. Waiting for assignment #1.

JohnL

 

[WinterWarlock]

Sounds like fun...

 

[Taconic]

Sounds good to me.

 

[Brambor]

50/50

I'm 50/50 on this.

 

[paul ron]

Make my day!

 

[Billy]

First Homework Assignment

Shoot anything in silhouette. Skier, biker, hiker, summit sign, grizzly bear, cairn. Whatever, it's your choice. Nice silhouette tips here.

Homework due by the end of the month. Early submissions always welcome.

 

[Chip]

Good idea. Are these to be new photos ? I'll start with some older ones, so we can critique and improve from here;

First is my son on Osceola last August;

Second is one of our guides approaching Ingraham Flats on Rainier. That's Muir in the background and you can just see the lump in the clouds that is Mt St Helen. I'm going to look for the original on this and re-edit to bring the guide further into the pic;

 

[Billy]

Chip, first of all, cool shots.
No, don't need to be brand new photos. Photos you've already taken will work.
No picky rules here, this is all for fun and learning, hopefully in that order.
Please let me stress again, there are no "rules" here, but when I mentioned silhouette, I was thinking that the subject of our photos would be featureless (an outline colored in with black magic marker). In your first photo, mentally place your son right on the edge of that cliff , then remove the mountains right in front of him as they will detract from his distinct outline, then have him watching the setting or rising sun so wrt the camera he's backlit, then make sure you don't use flash and you do expose for the sky. Voila, a sharp black silhouette of your son against a bright background.
Of course, easier said than done (especially the part about dad placing son on edge of cliff), but that's the gist of it.
Same idea with the guide....put him on the crest of a ridgeline with nothing but clouds and/or sky behind him.
If you want to see how a pro does it, check out Tim Seaver's avatar. If you want to see how a hack does it, stay tuned for my entry.

 

[Taconic]

 

[hardyb]

Another older photo, hiker approching summit of Mt adams.

 

[hardyb]

Descending Monadnock

One of my favorates, "Descending Monadnock" 2nd place in AMC Outdoor photo contest a few years back.

 

[pudgy_groundhog]

Neat idea! Here are two I've taken. There are still some details visible on Steve, but pretty close to silhouette.

Steve took these, but wanted to include because I really like them:

 

[MichaelJ]

I'll post this one on behalf of Dave Metsky. He took this shot of me back in 2002 (click for larger):

 

[McRat]

Lots of nice pics already. I always liked this shot I took from Madison at sunset. Not the greatest camera, but gambling with overexposure is fun on point and shoot cameras sometimes.

 

[nartreb]

 

[darren]

Hardyb - your shot on Monadnock reminded me of a shot I took on Adams many moons ago:

Here's half a silhouette of Swamp (still counts, I guess):

My favorite silhouette shot is of an elk in Colorado. I don't have a bigger version online, but I have a 18x24 print of this hanging over my desk and I love it. You can see the elk's mouth is open and he is bugling.

You can see it in this picture, but in the print version, there is enough detail that you can see the legs so they are not really suffering from the cut off leg syndrome that Tim Seaver described.

Aloha

- darren

 

[smitty77]

Unfortunately the only hiking I get to do lately is around a quarry so the best I can do is a hot-mix asphalt plant at daybreak. Shot with a Nikon D50 on Auto - sometimes you get lucky then you pull the trigger.

 

[Technetium]

I apparently don't do silhouettes very often. Here are a couple shots pulled from my Flickr gallery... I'll try to actually do something intentionally for this assignment before the end of the month. I'll see if I can at least get out to Mount Monadnock again.