When my photo-club invited me along for a photo-walk in our surroundings. Since this both sounded very nice and worked exceptionally well with my plans to broaden my view of the surrounding area I said yes.
So me and a few members met up at a car park in Taberg for a nice walk along the local creek and here are some of the images I got.
The challenge for this week was very open to interpretation which hopefully will lead to some very interesting submissions. Personally, I did find it interesting to try and look at ordinary things in a new way, which lead to a week of examining the world around me again.
Highlighting what makes the ordinary special is in my mind one of the biggest powers of photography, it gives you the possibility focus on the specifics. It’s also allows you to freeze motion or display hidden patterns in flowing lights and all of this strips away the common in our surroundings.
So, for this week’s challenge I started by trying to locate things that stood out from the ordinary but soon realised that I didn’t find that search appealing. So Instead I begun experimenting with different angles and light conditions trying to find something that felt appealing while still being uncommon. Coming in at towards the end of this week I decided that I should focus and light and reflections. This together with the idea of looking at your surroundings from an uncommon direction made me decide on the subject for the week.
This week I started out with a well-defined plan, shooting an area where I have gotten a few other pictures I really enjoy from a new angle. The area is the centre-point of my current hometown surrounding both the opera house and a bridge crossing the tiny lake parts of the town is built around. This area is like most cityscapes dull during most days but with each night’s darkness It comes to life creating a very nice scene. This is something I’ve found true for most cites where the dark covers the imperfections and highlights the ingenuity and commitment that’s required to build a modern city.
This well-defined plan did however run into some minor issues quick, mainly the fact that my idea didn’t really pan out. My new angle on an old problem wasn’t what I had thought so I spent a little time walking around the area looking for new ways to shoot the scene. Luckily (since I shoot this on Sunday night) my walkabout revealed an angle that I’ve previously been searching for overlooking both the bridge and the opera house. The calm water and dark sky provided good conditions for long the special effect I was after.
This continues to be one of the best views of my home town and I will continue to go back there for new angles and new inspiration. And as for night time photography in cites, it’s one of my favourite ways to display and experience cities. It’s also one of the only ways it’s possible to photograph the cities I’ve lived in during most of the year, at least while still working regular hours.
The challenge for the week is to take a picture of my work area, which for me can be quite a few places but I decided to focus on my photography workspace. Which after close to a year with a very uncomfortable desk finally have become a good place to work. The intent with the picture is to illustrate the biggest changes that’s been made, mainly in getting an actual office desk instead of a small kitchen table. But also structuring the storage and display area creating a quite and calming workspace with a lot of opportunities.
I decided on a close display to focus on the changes instead of showing the entire area, the idea being to focus on the feeling instead of the specifics. During the week I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about workstations and realised that they really do matter. Especially in todays world of enforced open workspaces and activity-based offices. The idea of a personal workspace where you have total control have become a luxury for knowledge workers and modern artist. Luckily, I’ve manged to avoid the worst kind of desk sharing and keep a designated desk at work even if it’s placed in an open office area.
This week really was a challenge, I had a really hard time finding inspiration and the few ideas that pop into my head where quickly swallowed by 20ish centimetres of snow. However, the challenge is rewarding so even if this was a hard week, I found it enjoyable. I’ve also begun to realise that I need to focus earlier in the weeks to be prepared for the coming challenges. So far, I’ve been on the back foot every week spending the last few hours of the Sunday night rushing through the challenge. Luckily even with the rush this challenge has forced me to think about different types of subjects is interesting.
The challenge for the week is macro, something that I’ve never really done which of course means that I don’t really have anything in the way of equipment for it. However, I decided to soldier on and use the trick of reversed lenses to get closer focus. This does have some limitations though mainly the fact that I get an extremely narrow field of focus and since I am holding a lens manually no real way of getting a stable shooting platform.
This together with the very close focus I was left with led me to a bit more abstract imagery then I usually focus on. Given these limitations I started walking around the house trying to find subjects that I could bathe in enough light and capture something interesting.
Sadly, I do feel that this type of photography is dependent on either very stable hands or preferably very specialised gear. Which also led to me being less pleased with the results of my efforts which mainly focuses on very close crops of house plants.
I did however really enjoy the process which did spark an interest in close photography, I did find the attention to detail necessary for even decent results very motivational. This is also one of the reasons for challenges such as this one, it forces me out of my regular patterns and lets me try new ways of seeing the world around me.
