Challenge #25 - Creative distortion

Thanks all for your votes...

This week's theme is a transformation of the famous expression "creative destruction", which says that difficult economic times (like these days for instance) generally produce a wave of innovation and creativity, despite the destruction of capital.

So please, exploit the distortion of your lens, your environment or your imagination!!

Deadline for submitting: Monday, April 6 midnight
Vote: Tuesday April 7
Results: Wednesday April 8

The winner of Challenge # 24 - Spring Cleaning is...

Louis! With a whopping 63% of the vote! Congratulations! Please pick our next challenge. (Sorry this was so late, guys, Sandy totally forgot to post the results. Bad slut.)

Here are the winning photos:

Challenge #24 - Spring Cleaning VOTE!!

I'm really happy with the number of submissions, guys!! Louis, welcome back!

Bloom

Contrary to Paul, I do not think flowers are lame. Behold:



I like its textures, and the buildings that I had been avoiding actually add some balance and context to the shot I think.

A Spring, Cleaning

I tried to come up with something interesting in nature first. Maybe a bird picking up some trash. Maybe a bug on a flower eating another bug. A squirrel cleaning its own face. Stupid nature wouldn't cooperate. Still, I took lots of pretty pictures that don't fit this challenge.

Instead, I went with the pun. I had to work pretty hard to sneak up on a Slinky spring toy in the act of vacuuming my living room. I think it looks startled.

First an action shot to show the cleaning:


Then a close-up of that surprisingly helpful spring toy:


You can see the rest of my candidates on my flickr page. They're mostly just shots of flowers and trees and birds. Lame. But there are also many more action shots of the spring, cleaning.

Spring cleaning... products

After a few weeks (read: months) of inactivity, I'm happy to say that just like springs, I'm alive again. I found it difficult to keep up with my photography this winter because it was dark and cold. But hey, spring is back and so am I. Here's my contribution for this week.

Spring Cleaning - The District

As our seasons turned to spring, so did my interest in taking my butt outside (away from the nightclubs) to shoot some photos of our beautiful city. So today I wandered downtown in search of something being cleaned. And thankfully I came across our wonderful downtown sidewalk janitors out and about doing their thing.

And off they go...

Challenge # 24 - Spring Cleaning

"I'll polish the leaves
Make 'em green again,
Shake off the trees,
Change the scene again.
Spring cleaning,
Gettin' ready for love."
- Fats Waller's Spring Cleaning, as composed by Walter Samuels, Leonard Whitcup, Teddy Powell (1937)

Jason pointed out to me that this was the time of the vernal equinox (Mar. 20th), so that the challenge of Spring Cleaning seemed particularly appropriate. Hooray for almost equally long days and nights! If you're near the equator, this will be really obvious. And I hate you for being near the equator.

Anyway, take those two words and run with them! Maybe clean off your camera if you haven't submitted in a while, because of course only new photos are allowed.

NOTE: I believe Ann told me that the deadline is Wednesday, voting on Thursday, like the last time.

BONUS POINTS: bring the equinox to mind.
EXTRA BONUS POINTS: show the entire planet half-bathed in light and dark.

(remember, the bonus points don't matter, but if you get the Extra Bonus points, you'll probably win.)

The winner of challenge #23 - Panorama is...

Pason! AKA Jaul! It's a tie between Jason and Paul! 50/50, right down the middle.

Paul, good luck contacting Jason while he's in Italy. Send messenger pigeons if necessary. If not, go ahead and make an executive decision, and hope he doesn't bump you off you with his new mafia skills when he returns. Death by gelato....

Challenge #23 - Panorama - VOTE!

Train Tracks & Mountains

It was a beautiful day out so how could I resist taking pictures of the outdoors?

For a larger image, click here.

Here's also another shot, but this includes the lake!

For a larger image, click here.

Branches

During my free hour between jobs yesterday I set up my tripod in my backyard and took a few shots of my trees as seen from the ground (lying on a blanket at a picnic perhaps?). Kind of a reverse bird's eye view I suppose. Stitched together with MS Paint.

Click here for a larger view (and then don't forget to click on it with the magnifying lens cursor).

Legoland and Teddy Bears on Parade!

I really should have read the instructions on how to take panoramic photos before I just went out and starting snapping away. Ah, well, it just means that I had to work even harder this time around. Fortunately, the subjects of my photos made this work feel like play! WARNING: these photos are enormous!

I wanted to find a lego landscape I could photograph in such a fashion that it felt like you were actually lego-person-sized... Field trip to the lego store in Woodbridge, VA!



As we were leaving the Lego store in search of food, a long stretch of America's number 1 threat caught my eye and I had to take some pics.



I had downloaded the "hugin" program in hopes that it would stitch the panoramic photos together for me. That did work in a couple cases, like one Lego spread, a Disney photo spread, and a 360 degree photo shoot inside a gazebo. But the two subjects above didn't work in the program, so I stitched those together manually.

The rest of my candidates are on flickr, starting with the 9 that I did stitch together into panoramic views, and continuing with various photos I used for source material and various photos that I thought I might use.

Domino....Macro.... Panoram...ohh....

I made both of these essentially the same way. I took a 30 second video while I rotated the camera upwards. Then I took every other frame as a still and lined them up in paint. The first photo started at the bottom and the second one started at the top. Unfortunately my video camera automatically adjusts for the background light level causing the seams you can see between the images.

The view is from the wave break that surrounds the harbor in Riomaggiore.

Challenge #23 - Panorama

Panorama-lama-dingdong!

Since it took me so long to post the challenge, let's say this one is due by the end of next Wednesday, March 18th (votes on the 19th). Who knows, maybe that timeframe will end up working better for people.

All right, dust off your tripods and get snapping!

The winner of challenge #22 - Time is....

...Ann! Bravo on being a timelord!

Here, as a reminder, is her winning photo:

Challenge # 22 - Time VOTE!!

Two stops don't make a go

Not just one stop (in time), but two! With the light on the left and the sign on the ground it reminds me of a crime scene photo. A speudo strobe effect that makes you wonder what happened when.

Keepin' Time

Keepin' Time - RockBand style!

It's in a Bottle and It Flies

Oh, Mr. Croce, you had a talent for turning a phrase. When does time really come to mind? When you're waiting for something:



And since I've been having so much fun while I've been taking photos with my new camera, of course this cliche would come to mind:



You can see the rest of my candidates on my flickr page. I particularly had fun taking photos of sandglasses and catching the little grains as they fell!

Le Temps...

For my first photo...

I tried to capture the notion that time can be fleeting.

For the full version, click here.

Et ensuite...

I tried to capture something that reflected time in the sense that objects can seem "timeless," but I guess this could also be called "going back in time," or something of the sort...

So I found a shelf full of old French books that are falling apart and it made for some cool shots.  I don't know if you can read the titles but some included works by Molière, Pascal, and there was some Hugo floating around, but it might not have made it into the photo...so there we go, authors/philosophers/a mix of the two are timeless in the way that one can still enjoy their works today.  And the fact that they're in French makes it even better (but I'm a little biased).

For the full version, click here.

Time is on my side

Okay, I'm not ready to submit my choices just yet, but I've still got another day before the deadline. STILL, I thought maybe if I shared my pool of attempts, that it may stir more submissions this time around.

So, here's what I've got so far on flickr.

And (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) remember that it's not too late to submit your entries if the VOTE post hasn't happened yet!

Challenge # 22 - Time

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This year in the United States, Daylight Saving Time begins at 02:00 on Sunday, March 8. Not every country observes this practice of making it easier to do business in daylight, but we sure do it.

Time is money, time is precious, time is fleeting, and so Time is this week's challenge.

BONUS POINTS: no visible analog or digital representation of the time of day.

(not that the bonus points matter, it just occurred to me as tricky)

The winner of #21 - Childhood is...

Paulidin! It was another tight race folks. Congrats!

OK Paul, bring it!

Here, as a reminder, are his winning photos:

Challenge #21 - Childhood VOTE!

Time to take a break from boring worketywork and vote for your favorite snapshots this week!

(Also, well done everyone on not being creepy as per Kate's advice.)

Let's relive our youth

It's been a long time since stuffed animals have been this big to me:


My second photo was another nostalgic activity, making toys out of whatever I could find. Meet Marvin, my office friend that I made because the internet was inaccessible and I was therefore lonely.

Child's Play

Okay, I was surrounded by people in public and made no attempt to hide the fact that I was taking photos. That seems to have kept me safe enough as I was taking some shots in Ikea of the best room ever:



And then there's this fun playground set near my home that's far superior to anything I had as a kid. I play with my dog on it, sometimes. So, here's how life looks to a youngster:



I've been taking advantage of my camera's burst mode to take numerous photos where I'd previously just take one. The rest are on flickr, as usual.

Trying to relive my childhood on a snowy day...

In honor of the freshly fallen snow on the 1st and 2nd days of March...(something is wrong with that, oh well, at least it's pretty)...I decided to go on a little adventure.

In this one, I went back to my old elementary school's playground and had a little too much fun going down slides and hanging on the monkey bars--well, rewind...walking while pretending to swing on the monkey bars since I'm a bit taller now and my feet can reach the ground. (I was never a very agile kid and apparently that trend followed me up until now)

And for my second photo, I decided I would go on a walk but after about 5 minutes, the idea of making a snow angel in the six or so inches of powdery snow seemed pretty enticing. Unfortunately I was lacking proper snow attire, but I figured, what the hell...