Dogwood Week 7 - Portrait - Faceless

I had taken some pictures for this challenge earlier in the week but dismissed them as I thought that I could do better. So I tried to get a better shot using my wife and daughter as my models sharing an embrace on the couch. The back of one person's head would block the others. It looked great in my head but I couldn't get the camera to capture it.

So I decided to look back at the photos I took days earlier and I found one that I did like after-all. THE FIRST ONE I SHOT. My daughter was sitting down doing her homework and I took a few shots of her writing down math answers. It's just her little hands, but it worked.

Here is a breakdown of the camera settings:
Camera - Nikon D610
Lens - 24-85mm f/4.5
Focal length: 85mm
ISO - 100
Exposure - 1/10 sec.
Flash - Did not fire

Note: Those cinnamon hearts from the Candy challenge came in handy with teaching her addition and subtraction.

Dogwood Week 6 - Artistic - Candy

For the week 6 challenge, I wanted to use the lightbox that I had purchased for my wife to take photographs of the cards she makes. The challenge was to take a photo of candy in an artistic way and I figured some closeups with a white background might look great.

I played around with setting my DSLR to manual and reversing my 50mm lens to take some faux-macro images. Some of them worked out better than others, and you really had to pay attention to what you had in focus. I shot some cinnamon hearts in this way but ultimately felt that there was too much red in the image. Plus I felt like I was getting a headache from a bit of eye strain.

Then I moved onto the second bag of candy that I had purchased. (My kids loved me a little extra that day.) I first tried shooting a few shots of a pile, but then I started sitting the candy hearts up in staggered rows. I finally created the image below which I was happy with after trying a few different angles and focus points.

Here is a breakdown of the camera settings:
Camera - Nikon D610
Lens - 24-85mm f/4.5
Focal length: 85mm
ISO - 5000
Exposure - 1/160 sec.
Flash - Dd not fire

Landscape: Black and White

Five weeks in and I'm really loving this challenge. It could be any photo challenge really, I just love that it has reminded me that I get a huge kick out of taking pictures and sharing them with others.

This week was to take a black and white landscape picture, so I set out one lunch hour at work. There are a lot of brownstone buildings near the downtown core in Kitchener that are getting revitalized into some amazing work spaces. This is a view of the new Google Kitchener office at the Breithaupt Center building from one of the corners. If this picture was taken from the opposite corner you probably wouldn't believe that they were one and the same.

After I took a few pictures there I headed on to the downtown where I thought I would find more inspiration for a picture. The weather had some other ideas as the snow started coming down a little strong at times washing out any contrast that I was on a hunt for. The fire escape on the Lang Tannery building was exactly what I was looking for. The snowflakes add to the image but I wish two didn't land on the lens and cause an unappreciated blur.

I really enjoyed creating these black and white images that I can see me pursuing this artform more often. A book from the library has shown me that I still have a lot to learn. Bring it on!

Artistic Red Photography

For the week three challenge of the Dogwood 52 week challenge I posted a video instead of a photograph. While this was my attention starting out on this journey as I want to explore my videographer skills as much as photographer, but I realized that I need to do both in tandem. So over the weekend I shot anything in sight that was red looking for a perfect photo.

The photo below was taken at the Borealis Grille and Bar which is decorated with items from the same historical era as when it was a school. The red really stood out and I knew that I had found my picute.

Here is a breakdown of the camera settings:
Camera - Nikon D610
Lens - 24-85mm f/4.5
Focal length: 56mm
ISO - 640
Exposure - 1/8 sec.
Flash - Dd not fire

Dogwood Week 3 - Artistic: Red

I don't know if it is because it was the dead of winter and everything seems void of colour, but I found this challenge a tad difficult. The focus of photo or video was to feature the colour red. I had shot a few different things but none of them felt right. Thankfully I had shot for the previous challenge which was a traditional landscape some video of the flags blowing around outside my work.

I've decided that I can't leave these challenges until the week of anymore. I need to work on three at a time and give myself some more room to create something more artistic. If anything, the challenge is living up to its name, as it is teaching me a few lessons already and I'm making some improvements.

Landscape: Traditional - 52 Week Photo Challenge

The challenge this week was to get capture a traditional landscape photograph. Part of the Dogwood Photography's encouragement for this challenge was to 'not forget the sky', which has been very hard to do as it has been dropping lots and lots of snow on us.

As my world this week is in shades of white, I decided to give my photo the black and white treatment. This is a photo of the Grand River in Kitchener, Ontario taken around noon inbetween snow squalls.

Here is a breakdown of the camera settings:
Camera - Nikon D610
Lens - 24-85mm f/3.5
ISO - 400
Exposure - 1/500 sec at f/ 11
Flash - Did not fire

Follow me on Instagram - @steveccoleman

52 Week Photography Challenge - Week 1

Dogwood Photography, out of North Carolina, have come up with an awesome 52 week photography challenge for 2016. This seemed like a great opportunity to, in their words, push my photography to the next level. I'm not a professional by any means but I do like exploring the world from behind the camera.

I plan to take a videography perspective with the challenges as much as possible as that is where my personal interest lies. This is going to be great! I'm really looking forward to participating in this 52 week challenge and watching my skills improve and creating something unique and new to share with the world.

Here is my Week 1 Post - A Self Portrait


Here is a breakdown of the camera settings:
Camera - Nikon D610
Lens - 50.0mm f/1.8
ISO - 400
Exposure - 1/60sec at f/1.8
Flash - Did fire

Learn more about the challenge here: http://dogwood.photography/52weekchallenge.html