Challenge # 7 - Faceless portrait

Woooooo creepy. In honour of Halloween (and pirates...don't ask), the challenge this week is faceless portraits. Halloweeny or artsy, all guns ablaze!

Deadline: Next Monday, by midnight, ye landlubbers!

The winner of challenge # 6 - cold snap is...

Sarah! With 55% of the vote!

Congratulations!

Here's the winning photo:

Challenge # 6 - Cold snap VOTE!!

First of all, what the hell, people. I love you all dearly, but more people need to post. *stern face* I mean really. What am I going to do at work if there are only 4 or 5 posts each time? I might have to like... be productive or something. (Ew.) I know I didn't post either, and I'm stapling my hand to my camera right now. (KACHUNK! Gush, spurt, faint)

That being said, awesome submissions this past week! Vote for your favorites, and please try to comment on photos!

 

also not shot for this, but i'm trying really hard to keep up with the weekly posts!    

Warm!

I didn't take this photo specifically for the challenge, but I think it fits anyway.

Morning Frost

From Friday morning morning frost on my car.
looking a bit like part of a forest...

skiing ... coming soon.

Falling like flies...

Hi everyone,
I guess I’ll "break the ice" this week!
With cold times coming, it makes life difficult for small insects. Yesterday, I found a dead fly by my window :-(

Some of you, looking at these pictures, could think that I own a crazy powerful macro lens. Well, not exactly. I just used a technique I found on the internet.

For the rest of my fly pictures, see my picasa website.

Louis

Challenge # 6 - Cold snap

Our first challenge that's a play on our name!

It's been getting colder, and I know it snowed this morning where some of you live, so let's make the glass half full by celebrating (or at least photographing) the coming of cooler weather.

Deadline: Monday Oct 27, midnight

Bonus points/restrictions: none (Woohoo, crazy freedom! I'm gonna go get tattooed right NOW!!)

The winner of Challenge # 5 - Food is...

Steve Losh! Woohoo! Violence is really the answer.

He won with 36% of the vote! It was a close race, folks! Keep submitting these awesome photos.

For your reference, here was the winning shot:

Challenge #5 - Food VOTE!

Awesome round of submissions this time, guys. Glad a whole bunch of people submitted, including new people! Hooray! Please comment on the photos and vote by the end of today EST!

(sorry about the shortened schedule, we're trying to get back on track)

Heavenly rice

Especially the grains stuck to the lid. Sticky-tastic.

I'm definitely not a food photographer...

This unlucky apple was the outlet for my frustration at not being able to come up with something for this.

Pumpkin Creme Brulee

Alicia made pumpkin crème brulée this week. Basically pumpkin pie filling (homemade with a farmer's market pumpkin!) with a brulée topping. I decided to take the opportunity to get a couple of "action" shots. The weird orange tinge isn't the camera, it's the actual color of the food.

Unfortunately, I still haven't figured out a way to really capture the sugar bubbling as the torch goes.

Ananas comosus (pineapple!!)

Hi everyone.
This weekend was my cousin’s wedding and she asked me to take her official photos. First I was flattered, but soon I realized that I would have to do a damn good job, since this event only comes once in a lifetime (let’s hope). So, I borrowed some equipment from a photographer friend of mine (read: 3 reflectors and an extra flash).
Here I was tonight, sitting in my apartment, thinking about this week’s challenge. I told myself that I better use all this equipment before I give it back to him. So here are my pictures of a pineapple.
The first photo shows the set-up. Those who like to analyse each photo will notice on the extreme left that I already started eating some Halloween candies (the famous Rockets!).
The second photo was taken by firing one flash through a translucid refector behind the object, while the flash on my camera bounced on another reflector (silver) in front of the object (the camera was in between the 2 reflectors). Finally, I used the third reflector as a “table cloth”. I photoshoped the second picture to remove the edge from the reflector on the table.

What do you want? I dunno....What do you want?

I decided to try to step out of my abstract-macro-shot box a little on this one, and take it in a slightly different direction than most of the shots that have been put us so far.

And so I give you a musing on the ever-present question: "What's for dinner?"

A brief word on bonus points

Bonus points. They're not really points. They really don't affect anything. We could call them "fun things we thought of that would maybe give people ideas and would be neat to see," but that's just too long. So. If your submission does not involve the bonus, don't worry about it. Because it's just a fun thing we thought of that would maybe give people ideas and would be neat to see.

summary: bonus points =! real points of any sort.

Just wanted to clarify a little bit. Remember, we're trying to encourage creativity, imagination, other abstract nice ideal with rainbows, etc.

Awesome posts. Don't wanna hold you guys up. Keep posting! Deadline is tonight!

first posting!

i'm going to try really hard to keep up with this :)

here's a carrot.

Paul's "Breakfast and Pizza"

I was hoping I could buck the trend of taking extreme close-up shots of food in my submissions, but I just couldn't make wider field photos look interesting! Even inviting my dog to get in the shot for a loldogs+nom composition was only mildly amusing and not appetizing at all. I found that the best shots I took put the viewer in the vantage point of diving facefirst into the food. I hope another snapslut can show me how to do otherwise.

My first submission is one of the first macro shots I tried out for this challenge. Panera provided the meal and while I was attempting several variations on their patio, I got to talk to about half-a-dozen people who wanted to know why I bought food just to take photos of it. Snapsluts, I've now revealed you to several Silver Spring residents.


For my second shot, I figured that since pizza and hamburgers contend for "Most Popular Food" in our fair country (and since I'm vegetarian), I'd get some salivary reactions from a colorful pizza. FYI, leftover pizza tastes much better than it looks. A fresh pie, once again from the vantage point of nose-touching-it, makes the subject of this second submission.


And as usual, the rest of my photos are on my flickr page.

Real food = Raw food

Salad
I love preparing it and the colors always amaze me.
The photo was a 6 sec exposition and the dressing was poor during the shot.

cheers

Challenge #5 - Food

Deadline: Monday Oct 20th, end of day (back on schedule!)

Bonus points: Make us hungry

I suspect Bruno's submission for last week's challenge played a part in this week's topic. Also, we all eat food, so it's a good choice for a shortened submission period and for members who haven't posted yet.

Om nom nom nom!

The winner of Challenge #4 : Morning(s) is...

Louis with 60% of the votes! Félicitations!

And just to recap his winning image:

Challenge # 4 - Morning(s) VOTE!

VOTING TIME! So many levels. But right now we're thinking of photos.

Relatively good turnout considering the holiday/Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown. Now time to comment on photos and vote! Remember, we all want your thoughtful, constructive comments so we can improve!

Coffee & CAD

This is what I see every morning when I get to work. Drawings to be corrected for the intern, then working on my own stuff.

Ginormous mug of coffee is required.

Ray of morning light

For some reason, I wasn't too inspired by the "morning" theme from this week, although I recognize it's a good one, especially looking at everyone's pictures.
I still managed to take one on Saturday morning. The sun rays through my blinds made a strange pattern on the wall.
Louis

Early Morning Spirituality

I shot this church on my way into work. I loved the texture of the clouds so it was only natural to turn around and grab my camera. I had seen sky texture like this before and kept saying I wanted to have my camera with me. This time I just did it...all because of the SnapSluts!

Paul's "Man's Morning versus Nature's Morning"

My initial approach was going to be Bad Mornings versus Good Mornings (crowded Starbucks versus pretty morning dew on flowers). But Starbucks wasn't crowded and by the time there was sunlight, there was no dew on the flowers! Darn it!

Instead I went with Man's Morning versus Nature's Morning. I choose one shot that's got no indication of morning except for the fact that it shows a very human morning ritual, and another one that shows a very obvious sign of morning in the outdoors.









I was really tempted to use the pretty treetop photos I took as more clearly showing morning, but I decided to use the photo of the tree shadow that I thought was "neater" even though it may not be as precisely appropriate. Here are the rest of the shots I took for this challenge, on flickr.

Morning is a state of mind.

Not a time. At ULHS, we were waking up and going to bed at odd hours... But I managed to steal away and take a couple shots of *my* morning.

Morning Goodies

I had so many ideas and so little time to make it happen so here a view into my sweet side.
From Sunday morning breakfast with friends.

happy drooling!!

New Morning Routine

I guess most of you are at ALHC, so I'll start.



My work schedule changes to 1 PM to 9 PM starting Tuesday. This means my mornings are going to be free, and I plan on spending them practicing bass and drinking coffee.

(Larger version at flickr, which the photo links to.)

Challenge # 4 - Morning(s)

For those of you who don't know, this upcoming Monday is Columbus day. Some of you get days off. You people can go to hell. Also, this weekend is Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in Minnesota. Some of us will be there for most of the weekend. (If you want to tell those people to go to hell, then that's fine too) As a result

SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE BY NOON ON WEDNESDAY

You get more time! Woohoo! Please submit one (or two if you can't decide) photo with the theme morning(s). For those of you who are curious as to how the process of decision works, the sluts grow some beards, run their fingers through them, take a look at THIS AWESOME BOOK and ding! Inspiration!

Hopefully you'll find some nice inspiration for this week's challenge.

The winner of Challenge # 3: Crackle is...

*nervous coughing can be heard in the audience*

Paulidin with 67% of the vote! Congratulations, Paulidin!!

The winning submission:

Challenge # 3 - Crackle voting time!

Vote, vote, vote! Vote, vote, vote! Unless you are a felon, 'cuz felons can't vote.

Also, only 5 submissions this time?? Come on, people!!

OTHER SUPERFLUOUS PUNCTUATIONNNN

So here's my first attempt at what I'll optimistically call photography. The only thing I could think of with the crackle theme was what happens when you accidentally get water in a pan of hot grease. These two represent my two favorite of about 10 tries at dropping a teaspoon of water into a skillet of bacon grease. I used the image editing software that came with my laptop to mess with the colors a little bit.

Paul Krackels Everything

Okay, so, I like playing with words. And food. As soon as I read this challenge, I thought of a crackling fire and Hershey's Krackel candy bars. I already had a fireplace, but no candy bars. A couple of trips to grocery stores and I had all the tools I needed to create photos that only I would find amusing.

I tried some straight up fire photos, but they were boring. Then I added a candy bar and they were awesome. My first submission: A Krackel-ing Fire.



My last combination of stuff involved a bowl of cereal that's known to be noisy, and that same awesome candy bar. My second submission: Snap, KRACKEL, Pop.



Thanks to Meg and Bruno and Steve Losh and whomever else gave tips on my previous photos. I did download the user's manual and played with exposure settings and f-stop settings and white balances. I don't know what any of those things mean, but I played with them.

And just for fun, here's all the photos I took trying to come up with submissions for this challenge. Yes, there are photos of my dog. Just cuz. Paul's Snapsluts Challenge 3 Photos

My Cracker Crackles...

Just like Bruno, I also spent 4 hours on Thursday night on this week's theme. It's great to spend some time for ourselves sometimes by doing something we like. I just love this blog!!

Here is my picture for this week. Seriously, I don't think I ever eated this many crackers in one night!!

Crackle!

Here we have the happy crackle:

And the Dramatic crackle:

Green Crackle

I'm the one breaking the ice this time.
after what was supposed to a be a hour make shift studio shooting, it turn out to be a 4h frustrating experience and I'm happy about it because I learn so much... I sure learn that I have to review some owners manual ;-)

from a Crackling Rose



enjoy the weekend

Challenge #3 - Crackle

Deadline: Monday Oct 6th, same slut time, same slut place

Bonus points: Evoking sound

Restrictions: None...

We've decided to add the rule (for all challenges) that you have to take the photo after we post the challenge, unless stated otherwise. So no crackly frozen lakes unless you visit Labrador, got it?

We're stoked at how many people submit great photos every week. To those who haven't posted yet, get your cameras out!

Also, feedback is still welcome on the format, challenges, voting procedure, etc.

OK, now get cracklin'! (hides face in shame)

The winner of Challenge # 2: Bird's Eye View is...

*breathes awkwardly into microphone*


DVS!! Congratulations!

Here are the winning photos: