For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!
The picture for Hygge is the first one I shot, and the only one I had for a long time during this hunt (I shot 7 out of 10 pictures on the last week-end before the time limit, so… not exactly early.) Looking for inspiration, hygge seems to evoke coziness, chimney fires, hot cocoa and the like. I re-used a piece of fabric that I had bought for “Cow” in a previous Hunt (yay, prop re-use!) to serve a blanket, and I cut a small book in a Nespresso ad that I had received a couple of days earlier. I’m *particularly* proud of the mug: it’s actually the cap of the box of earbuds tips that came with my new-ish earbuds – I was looking for something in that direction, was considering buying some clay to make something the right size, and… tada! A bit of blue tack to hold the mug and the book, a bit of posing and quite a few takes later, I had my picture.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
63mm
F-Number
F/14
Exposure time
6 s
ISO
500
I processed with warm tones to give the possible impression of a fireplace in front of the manikin. The fabric and manikin were a bit same-ish in the initial processing, so I darkened the manikin to make it “pop” a bit more against the cow blanket.
The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Hygge.
For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!
For “Lost”, I went for the pretty straightforward narrative of “having lost one’s keys (or phone, or whatever else) between the cushions of the sofa”. So this was essentially posing the manikin, shooting, basic processing, and done.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100mm
F-Number
F/8
Exposure time
1/80 s
ISO
800
The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Lost.
For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!
For the word “Empty”, I wanted a very minimalist image, with the idea of the manikin being in a completely empty room. I wasn’t exactly sure of how to achieve that because I lack a clean seamless white background of that size. But I got the idea of shooting from above on top of our (white) coffee table.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8
Focal length
70mm
F-Number
F/6.3
Exposure time
1/60 s
ISO
800
This gave me a manikin on a white background with a shadow below it (shadows are important to ground things on a surface, otherwise they’re floating!). I processed it by cropping the white content, increasing the canvas size to give more space to the image (and relying on software magic and a lot of cloning tools to make said canvas increase “realistic enough”), and making the whole image black&white to emphasize the minimalist approach.
The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Empty.
The theme for last week’s 52Frames was “Shoot from Below”. We set up the Christmas tree a couple of weeks ago, and it felt like a good subject to shoot from below – from the perspective of a Christmas gift, maybe?
The theme for this week’s 52Frames was “Food”. I knew that what we’d order on Friday night would probably be the most appetizing/colorful food of the week, so I took a few pictures, despite not having any kind of natural light, and being too hungry to set up proper lighting. In all fairness, I had setup some Lume cubes on my Platypod, and then I saw I hadn’t put them in the right holes to be able to raise the Platypod, and I ended up shooting holding my camera by hand.
Despite the dire lack of proper light, I’m not too grumpy with this picture – I think I did a reasonable job with colors in post and, while it’s not great, it’s… decent. And that was some very tasty food too 🙂
I haven’t been the most inspired for 52Frames lately, but I still haven’t broken my streak. So, here are my latest submissions. I’m too lazy to add comments, but I made the alt text more visible as captions too to compensate.
2022-40 – Rule of Odds
Three spatulas in a metallic pot over a wooden counter
2022-41 – Shoot through something
Distorted piano keys, seen through a crystal ball that makes them look curved, with black&white processing. The image is very symmetrical.
2022-43 – Black&White Minimalism
Black and white picture of hands in fingerless gloves over a Typematrix BÉPO keyboard, on a black background. The keyboard shows some wear and tear.
2022-43 – Details
Brown and orange butterfly on a white flower, with a blurry green background.
2022-44 – Chaos
Reflections of large trees in calm water ; the blue sky and the bottom of the water interact visually in somewhat eerie way.
2022-45 – Street Photography
A man wearing a hat and a woman sitting on a bench facing the lake. Two covered boats with red buoys are visible on the lake; the city and some trees are visible in the background of the lake. Two cranes surplomb the city.
I will admit: my participation to the 36th Scavenger Hunt was half-assed. I didn’t even submit the whole set – I was missing three; and some of these are, at best, backup shots. That said, I did submit images, and there are one or two that I’m actually happy with – so let’s go! In alphabetical order of submitted words, because why not. All the albums are available on the above link – visit them for more inspired creations around this list!
Bump
Tram tracks are definitely bumpy – not that much when driving a car (and even then…), but definitely so when using rollerblades, a scooter, a bike, or anything else. I may or may not have occasionally tripped on them when walking! The weather was very bright when I took this picture; I tried to compensate with a black&white processing and an abstract-ish composition. Feels pretty weak to me.
Door
Taken a few meters away from the tram track – again, not hugely inspired. Also, that tram was stopped in a photographically-annoying place, there’s a metallic pole on the right of the picture, and the crop as complicated.
Red/Green
For this one, we knew that our images would also be sent to a colorblindness simulation filter. I didn’t know exactly what to do with that information, but I still wanted something that would convey a red/green notion, even if all the colors disappeared. I played with multiple exposures around a trafic light; I wasn’t intending to have the blurred cars in the first place, but my experiments actually went there, and I didn’t hate it. I first took these images as a “proof of concept”, and I wantend to take some more with a bit more intent (… and a tripod), but that did not happen, so… that’s the picture.
Seated is the first picture I took and, for a long while, was the only one I’d submit this round. We went to Stoos at the very beginning of the Hunt, and we spent a significant amount of time going up and down the neighboring mountains in that kind of chair lifts! It was brilliant. This is my favorite picture for this round.
Sign
There was an extra field for the Sign picture to provide an alt text for the description of the image. I’ve been trying to do that systematically for quite some time – this way, I was ready! Here’s what I submitted for this one: “A tree stump with lichen and ivy, seen from the side, with a small metallic sign indicating that it was a Tilia platyphilla, or Sommerlinde (in German), of the Tiliaceae family, growing in Europa. A red brick building is visible in the background at the top of the image, where the tree used to be.”
I’m always sad when trees are felled, but I recognize that it is sometimes necessary. Keeping the sign plate and a fairly large stump felt like a good idea to me – as a kind of a memorial to the tree in question.
Silence
Picturing “Silence” is not easy – but I finally got the idea of using my noise cancelling headphones for that purpose. I hadn’t really planned my t-shirt choice, but it worked out perfectly, especially since Doctor Who has villains called the Silence! I went for a slightly high-key, slightly soft processing to emphasize the idea of calm (because silence is, well, good :P)
The theme for this week’s 52Frames was “Letters”. I started grumbling because the weather was pretty bad early in the afternoon; it finally cleared up, so I went for a walk with my camera (and my husband 😉 ). My initial goal was to take pictures of Bahnhof Enge, but there’s repair/cleaning works ongoing, so that was not what I wanted for that picture. I took a few more pictures around – I have at least a backup for this image, and we made way to the lake. On the way, I remembered this facade – those are better letters!
I first grumbled because of the tram stop, but the picture I got feels a bit more alive/story-telling that way, so I like it. And when coming home, I realized the “extra credit” for this week was “Cinematic” – I processed a bit more in that direction, and claimed it 🙂
This week, 52Frames’ theme was “Edited by someone else” – we had a spreadsheet to sign up, and we could ask other Framers to edit our pictures. I was in Stoos at the beginning of this week, and I was lucky enough to have a few pretty days, during which I captured that image. I sent it to Caleb Levy, who edited the above picture.
I did do more pictures around that area – if you’re interested (with my edits, though, not Caleb’s 😉 ), they’re here: Stoos – August 2022.
I wasn’t home for last week’s 52Frames, and I hadn’t taken my camera with me – which made the “Single Focal Point” theme a bit challenging (it’s typically the kind of theme where you do want focus and aperture control!). I still took a few pictures in the garden with my phone, and I edited this one to submit it in the last minute. I’ve honestly submitted worse images to 52Frames 😉
Balise's Blog 