Photo Challenge 9 – Seven Deadly Sins

There is a lot of scope to be particularly creative on this one, and I did think about that for my own personal submission.  However, I also felt it was important to remain true to my particular style, and moving into a more artistic world does not represent who I am as a photographer.  I don’t think there’s a lot of scope for varied interpretations of the theme itself, so it is with hope that each of the following images represents our respective photographic styles, as opposed to radical re-readings of the theme.

Steve’s submission

My thoughts:

I like to think I’m an observer of the world around me, rather than the creator of dazzling imagery, so my submission is a snapshot of something I saw a lot of in Osaka.  Part of me wanted to created a more picturesque, or visually appealing image for this theme, but I kept coming back to one part of society that truly represents the seven deadly sins.  In Melbourne it’s the Crown Casino. In Japan it’s Pachinko.  I was forbidden to take images of the machines or the patrons, so this is a sneaky snapshot taken one night just as the sliding doors were about to close behind a doomed gambling zombie. In a world of cute, tiny shops that battle to make the most of expensive real estate, Pachinko venues are large, noisy, lurid, garish and unappealing. Notice the repeated word “Get” standing out like a sore thumb. “Get more” ,”Get money”, “Get successful”, “Get happiness”.  All lies in this den of iniquity. More like “get lung cancer, liver disease and destitution”. I say “Get lost”.

• Lust – for all the things money can buy
• Gluttony – for self-punishment (you almost always lose when you gamble)
• Greed – for cold hard cash
• Sloth – both brain and body atrophy together
• Wrath – “Life is unfair”, “I never win”, “Leave me alone”, “I hate this machine”, “I hate this habit”, “I hate myself”
• Envy – Wishing you had the lifestyle of the rich and famous
• Pride – This is referring to me. I usually take no for an answer, so in this case I am proud that I was able to snatch an image of something immediately after being told not to.

There is significant noise in this image, as it was taken with my point and shoot at high ISO to capture as much light as I could.  I think my style is not at all about technical perfection, but about capturing a moment or some energy.  I hope this image does so.

ISO 800, F3.2, 1/50

Joepi’s Submission

Joepi says:

I haven’t been diving this weekend, and when I don’t dive, my thoughts end up where a girly-girl’s thoughts usually end up: SHOPPING. I realized as well how deadly it all can be. All 7 deadly sins can be committed, thought, seen or caused all in one setting. I also realized how much stuff I have in the little square space that I call my room, that I can actually do a shopping mall set up! LOL!

Now for the photography aspect: the little point and shoot was used for this one as I left my tripod in the office and I used the nifty little rotating screen on that camera to see myself as I shot the photos as I needed to see expressions and proper framing for the right message to be captured. Will having a remote and then tethering my camera to a laptop give me the same set up of a live-view on my laptop screen?

My thoughts: Brilliant! When people submit things like this it really inspires you to make more of an effort next time.  This took a lot of time, planning and effort, and the end result is well worth it.  I love the colours, the high-key backgrounds, and Joepi’s many expressions.  It made me laugh out loud, which is not something I do often.  In answer to the question about tethering and a remote – Yes. You USB the camera to your lappy, then you can either use it to view the images taken, or you can set it up to actually monitor what you are shooting. You can change settings and actually take the pics directly from the laptop.  The wired remote works fine, but you then have the problem of seeing it in your shot.  Therefore the Canon RC-5 wireless remote is the answer.

Mat’s submission:

Mat says:

I decided to be lazy this time and go with Sloth – cue obvious joke involving leaving the lens cap on and sending a completely black image. But no, not even I would stoop so low.
I’m sure some will be horrified to hear that this image was shot on a mobile phone – a Sony Ericsson w960i which has a 3.2megapixel camera which is quite capable for snapshots. The shot is taken from one of the upper levels in the Melbourne Central shopping centre and shows a security guard contemplating a spilled milkshake left behind by a very slothful person indeed. Or maybe the security guard is being slothful in that he’s using his radio to call for somebody to come and clean it up.
I played with the depth of field function in Paintshop Pro X2 and fiddled with saturation and sharpness in order to fake the tilt-shift effect that can make real things look like models. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how effective this was but I quite like the result!

For those who are interested you can see some spectacular tilt-shift shots here:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photography/

My thoughts: Cool effect. I would have cropped the superflous space out and presented a landscape image letting the people themselves speak, rather than play with effects, but it does make me want to fiddle around with this technique for some fun. That said, cropping a mobile phone image would reveal the total inadequacies of this medium for presentation-quality photography.  (Don’t take that too seriously – using my point and shoot at anything higher than ISO 400, as I did for my submission, is about on a par with using a very good cameraphone).

The people do look like plastic toys, and that’s what has my attention here.  The curve on the right and mass of blur underneath is driving me nuts, and I find the subject of the image becomes insignificant to me. I also query whether this is sloth, rather than carelessness.  Today’s youth (who else but a young person would drink a milkshake whilst walking in a shopping centre) are definitely lazy, but I think they are more careless than lazy. I think sloth is a an intrinsic way of “being” rather than just how you would describe an event or action.

Katy’s submission

Katy says:

Hail, Sinners. Hope you all have enjoyed this challenge as much as I did. A feeling of utter excitement took over me as soon as I found out that the seven deadly sins were up next.

I confess that this time my head was boundlessly buzzing with ideas – some of which will be carefully hoarded still. Bear in mind that a considerable heap of images will be protected by the inherent confidentiality of my bedroom.

And just so you know, I had all seven sins photographed – too bad I had to rule the other ones out. But the depicted sin that definitely stood out from the pack was gluttony. I couldn’t just help myself when I set my eyes on that ravenous little caterpillar. I had to have it shot for one main reason: caterpillars are the most voracious feeders ever known – therefore, the perfect portrait of gluttony.

My thoughts: I would have preferred to post the other image Katy considered – the one she posted on Flickr.  I think with some tweaks it is a much better image from an artistic, creative and thematic point of view, and in my opinion represents Katy’s style better.  I think this image above shows survival or opportunity, not gluttony, and it needs some thought put into the light source, composition and background.  I wonder what sort of butterfly that little guy will turn into later?  I’d also like to put up a direct challenge from our locusts. I reckon a few of them would have something to say about the voracious feeders debate.

Next Challenge

This was the penultimate challenge for which I am going to be the organiser and collator.  I know people like to read without commenting, but I’m not getting as much out of this as I am putting in.  Even though I receive many emails and IMs from people saying how much they like the Photo Challenge, so far the cost-benefit analysis shows too much weight on the cost side.

I recently posted a link on Facebook to an article incorporating thoughts on the trend for people to write about themselves online, but not be very good at contributing to discussion. I feel like this challenge has been about me doing a lot of writing and, with the exception of some occasional comments, I’ve been unable to ignite vigorous debate or even promote educational tidbits for those of us looking for self-improvement.  I often find that the best discussion occurs behind closed doors, via email or chat programs. That’s not much help to all the readers of this blog.

I will provide a final theme and I’ll post the results up as always.  However, I am looking for volunteers to run the challenge from this point forward.  To make it happen you’ll be given editing rights and some brief training on how to use the post template.  You’ll need to be both punctual and committed.  I’ll approve the final post before publication of course, but I’d like to take a back seat on driving the challenge itself for a while.  If there are no volunteers I’ll put the challenge to rest for a while, or at least reconsider how it can be run more effectively.  I might look at tapping into an already existing online challenge, if that’s possible.  Of course I am open to input from you, the readers and contributors.

The next theme has been submitted by Mat, and it is appropriately entitled “Photographer“.

Please submit your images by midnight on Sunday March 8th (in whatever timezone you reside).

Photo Challenge 4 – Transition

I’m impressed! I honestly didn’t think the gang could keep it together for this many challenges, but to all of our credit we’re still moving forward. Not only that, but we’re expanding our numbers.  As of next challenge I am very pleased to announce a new contributor – Katiane Goes.

Katy lives in Brasilia, the capital city of Brazil.  Katy is a teacher, and a beach lover who lives 1300 km from the nearest beach.  She has an excellent photo collection on Flickr which I invite you to go check out now. Welcome aboard, Katy!

Transition can mean so many things to so many people. And therein lies the fun of asking four very different people to apply their creativity to this theme.

Steve’s submission:

My thoughts: I’m not sure I should go first this time, as I don’t think my photo is really indicative of my style, nor a particularly good shot.  However, it does show the constant cyclic transition that nature experiences. In this case an old tree comes to a possibly untimely demise at the hands of farmers, but way below the eyeline, as yet unnoticed, the tree’s offspring raises it’s youthful head ready to take up the challenge of survival.  Shot on the Canon 30D, 45mm, F22, 1/50, ISO 100. Primarily processed in Lightroom 2.1 and all the really tough stuff cleaned in Photoshop CS3.

Mat’s Submission:

My thoughts: Mat, this is a fantastic idea.  I really love what you’ve come up with.  Next step for you is to build your technical skills to allow you to present the very best version of your ideas that you can. Ken is the post-processing master, so go drop in on him unannounced, with a bottle of wine of course, and get him to give you the works. Your photos will love you for it, and the less creative of us (i.e. me) will be bowing in deference.

Mat says: I struggled to come up with an idea for this one. I had some thoughts about sunsets or nature scenes where one landscape transitioned into another one, eg grass to beach to sea, or field to freeway, or parkland to car park – but the very wet Melbourne weather this weekend made me somewhat disinclined to venture into the great outdoors.

So I ended up deciding that with every tick of the clock we are transitioning from one time into another. I used a 5 second exposure to capture 5 ticks in a fairly gloomy room, then I massaged the result with some of the filters in Lightroom and Paintshop Pro to give it a slightly more abstract and grainy feel. I wanted an old fashioned look which is offset by the word QUARTZ showing it is actually a modern clock – hence indicating a transition from the old clock-work world to our modern electronic one.

Ken’s Submission:

My thoughts: I think Ken might still be having trouble with my Aussie accent, because he’s given us “trainsition” instead. This image had me believing the trains were both moving, making me wonder how on earth he took the shot. I love the character and details in Ken’s images, so even when I’m through thinking about the life analogy delivered by the passing trains, I can analyse the rails and stones to see what I can find in there.

Ken says: I must say…I have struggled with this week’s theme!  I understand why Stephen chose it, but once again I did not want to entertain the obvious and therefore set out to find something left of field. 

Whilst shooting the various images to compile this particular shot, U2’s Running to Stand Still was drifting through my head. For me, this week at least, transition is a train wreck in the making… We sometimes struggle to transcend without tearing down everything and beginning again. With all our optimism we set out with the lesson previously learnt in an attempt to make the transition to a better, happier life… Our problem is that we never really apply what was learnt and fall desperately back onto the same ol’ twisted tracks. All the while it seems that everyone else is on the fast train…passing us by…getting somewhere… anywhere….or maybe we are all just running to stand still?

U2 – Running to Stand Still (first verse)

And so she woke up

Woke up from where she was lying still
Said I gotta do something about where we’re going
Step on a steam train
Step out of the driving rain
Maybe run from the darkness in the night

This was shot with my trusted Nikon D2X, Nikon 28-35mm f2.8 lens. (shot at f8 at about 1/300 , ISO 200) 

Joepi’s Submission:

My thoughts: I left the best for last. This is the most tangible and definable transition of all, and Joepi’s presentation of herself in this collage is a little self-deprecating, a trait Aussies love.  I’ll leave it to Joepi to explain the story behind the image.

Joepi says: I had no plans of actually sending this,but I did put the collage together for the challenge just for the giggles.

The transition from drab to fab is every girly-girl’s favorite activity. And every woman goes through these transitions at least once in their lifetime, others do it too often, others too little and most, like me, do it for fun (especially if it’s a free make over!) 

Next challenge:

The next challenge will be a little different but the theme is a tad obvious – “Christmas”.

This time I am not looking for abstract images or unusual interpretations, but rather something that represents your personal impression of or experience with this particular event.

“Christmas” should be submitted by Sunday December 28

I’d also like each of you (including Katy) to submit a theme idea, and I’ll randomly use one for each of the upcoming four challenges.