The weather is getting better. Participation rates took the slightest uptick. Maybe next week it will take a big uptick??

But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates. You came to see the SHADOW submissions:

Angie DeWaard

Angie DeWaard

Micky Augustin

Christopher D. Bennett

Tamara Peterson

Stephanie Kim
This doesn’t look like much but it’s a room at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are lights in the floor and from above but he created this lighting effect to mimic the mountains in the area!

Sara Lockner

A solid week of submissions!

But enough dwelling on the past. Time to look to the future. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future! This week’s theme:

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT! What a great theme! But what is an ABSRACT photograph? Well here is a decent definition courtesy of the Googles:

art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.

Okay, great. Sounds like a picture that you messed up and now you’re calling it ABSTRACT. Take it easy there. Yes, sometimes you can screw up a picture so bad that it turns out abstract. Just a swirl of colors and shapes. But that can be beautiful as well.

However, here are a couple of suggestions for purposefully creating an abstract image.

1. Take a long exposure (in the dark) of lights. Hand hold the camera or move the camera around. Or move the lights around. (For example, the picture in the ABSTRACT reveal was taken with a 5 second exposure while I handheld my camera and drove by that semi rollover out on Ericson Corner last night on my way back from Buffalo Wild Wings following by rec leagues team banquet last night.
2. Another way to do an abstract image is to pick something fairly colorful and take a picture of it completely out of focus. You will have a lot more control of your final image this way. I don’t know if it is as much fun though.
3. You could also find an abstract piece of art and photograph it. The Computer Mine is lousy with abstract art, for example.

As always, I look forward to seeing your interpretations.

HOUSEKEEPING

A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 RULES DIVISION

1. The picture has to be taken the week of the theme. This isn’t a curate your pictures challenge. This is a get your butt off the couch (my personal experience) and put your camera in your hands challenge. Don’t send me a picture of you next to the Eiffel Tower, when I know you were in Iowa all week. I will point out that I have let that slide some in the past. I will not in the future. Since it is literally about the only rule.

2. Your submission needs to be emailed to bennett@photography139.com by 11 AM on the Monday of the challenge due date. It should be pointed out that this blog auto-publishes at 12:01 on Mondays. So it wouldn’t hurt to get your picture in earlier.

That is it, them’s the rules.

A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION DIVISION

On Friday night I went to The Open Flame in horrible Gilbert, Iowa for Andy’s birthday party extravaganza. While there, Andy convinced Jaxon Schoff to become the latest person to show class, taste, and sophistication by signing up for a Photography 139 email subscription. Jaxon might be the youngest subscriber currently. He is in the 8th Grade. But to think, if he is showing this much taste, class, and sophistication now… well he has av very bright future. America has a very bright future. If you see him out walking the mean county roads of rural Boone County feel free to give him a knowing glance and show him the super secret Photography 139 Handshake.

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That’s all I got for today, so if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will commune right here again next Monday. Hopefully it will be a very abstract Monday!