This week Bonnie challenged us to work with the optional theme of ‘light/shadows’.
I loved the way the light back-lit these hollyhock flowers so I have given them minimal treatment by adding Bonnie’s texture ‘dream wonder’ which I blended with linear light and reduced the opacity
Bonnie’s optional challenge this week was a really difficult one: incorporate some graffiti into your image or create your own.
I never miss an opportunity to photograph graffiti or street art but producing my own was quite a different kettle of fish! I settled for incorporating 2 of my photographs of graffiti with a third one of a piece of wall to produce this
DH said he thought the result looked a mess but I was more interested in the experiment than the final result.
And just for fun:
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer. (Wikipedia)
Bonnie‘s challenge this week was to interpret ‘portrait’ in whatever way we wished.
and finally, 3 variations of the same image
I’ve been following Jon Sanwell’s blog about his life in Vietnam. He’s just published a book of portraits he took while in Vietnam. You can see see it here. He’s a very gifted photographer.
For this week’s challenge, Bonnie invited us to share a piece of photo-art depicting ‘minimalist’ :
If you were to collect together your best/favourite photo art images that you’ve created this year to put into a coffee table art book, which photo would you use for the cover? This is Bonnie’s challenge for us this week.
This would be my first choice
Erato, muse of erotic poetry
closely followed by this
Why not pop over to and see what other photo artists are using for their cover pictures
For Friday 23 November Bonnie challenged us to use her texture “signed and sealed” in a piece of photo art. The texture is quite busy so some thought was required how best to use it. Eventually I came up with this:
this was the original photo – detail of a pavement of tile in Barcelona
I’ve been following Kim Klassen’s Beyond Layers class and this week she asked if we were “makers” or “takers” of photos. “Makers” are those who create their own still life compositions, then take photographs of them and alter them and “Takers” go out and take photographs. I’m definitely a taker; I don’t think I’ve made more than a couple of still life compositions in my whole photographic life. Coincidentally this week Bonnie challenged us to share a ‘digitally manipulated still life’ (as opposed to simply a still life photograph), so this was quite difficult for me. As luck as would have it, I’d taken a series a photos last month of a still life I’d come across in a hotel garden.
I superimposed 2 of the photos in Picasa and then opened the combined image in PSE10. I experimented with several different filters, keeping each result on a different layer. Then I merged them all together and got this as a final result.
The 9 November challenge from Bonnie was to share photos or photo art featuring lines. I’ve had a busy week so I’m sharing photos straight out of the camera this week:
staircase in the home of a friend of ours
the museum of Islamic Art in Kuala Lumpur
Garden festival in France
scanned photo of one I took in India many years ago – I love the lines in this one
scanned photo of one I took in India many years ago
why not pop over to Bonnie’s blog to see what other lines people have chosen.
For 26/27 October Bonnie challenged us to feature “derelict” in our photoart.
DER·E·LICT [der-uh-likt]
adjective
1. left or deserted, as by the owner or guardian; abandoned.
2. neglectful of duty; delinquent; negligent.
noun
3. a person abandoned by society, especially a person without a permanent home and means of support; vagrant.
4. Nautical . a vessel abandoned in open water by its crew without any hope or intention of returning.
5. personal property abandoned or thrown away by the owner.
Here are 2 versions of the same photo:
I applied a Filter Forge texture to the original photo which turned it black and white with rather a nice aged, crackle effect to the photo. I then added it to the original photo and blended it in linear light, reducing the opacity to 55%.
Trees always look beautiful in silhouette. Here are some of my silhouettes:
a windblown tree on Exmoor
not a tree but fennel produces some great silhouettes too
the shadow cast by the silhouette of a temple gable in Thailand
also shared with Straight Out of the Camera Sunday
