Assignments

To what worlds do the doorways in your photos lead you?

Make like Alice and view the world through glass. Is it a window, sheet of glass, mirror or maybe a special lens effect. Challenge your skills to create a new sense of reality.

Create an image with a different perspective. This can be a view from above, or “literally” a Bird’s view of the world. Practice unique composition using unusual angles and let your imagination run wild.

Submit images on subjects about which you are passionate. Let your images be a vehicle to convey your emotions about the subject.

What forms can they come in?  Ripples and Waves can be anything from waves on the ocean, ripples in fabric to “doing the wave” at a sports event.  Use your imagination and have fun being creative.

This month's assignment is trees. We are blessed, in this area, with an almost infinite variety of types and shapes and sizes. Some are tall while others are short (Bonsai anyone?). Big trees, small trees; bare trees or leafy; some show their roots to the world while others bury them deep underground, and on and on. What do you think of when you think of trees? The challenge is to create images that capture what trees mean to you.

For Inspiration:

• Learn Trees
• Tree Photography

This month's assignment is transportation. The challenge is to create images that capture / communicate the good and/or bad, the fun and/or frustration, the glamour and/or ugliness of the various means of moving folks around. Urban transport, or rural; motorized or human powered; sleek and modern or historic.

For Inspiration:

• How to Photograph Cars
• How to photograph trains

This month's assignment is to create images that communicate something of the heritage of BC. You may have an interest in local community heritage; architecture may speak of times past; a natural region may tell the story of the development of the province... Whatever you feel tells the story of something or someone that came before; that was a part of the history of BC, is fair game. While post-production effects that suggest old photos are fun, and can be very effective, consider challenging yourself to create an original image that communicates the heritage theme, even without the special effects.

For Inspiration:

• How to photograph abandoned places
• An introduction to architectural photography"

This month's assignment is motion. Still photography is a static medium. Conveying a sense of motion within that static medium is often essential to capturing a scene and/or emotion. The challenge is to convey motion in your images. Blur it, stop it, suggest it. How you convey motion in each image is up to you.

For inspiration, visit the digital photography school's article on How to Capture Motion Blur

Prepare images that could be used for a card or decoration celebrating one of the many winter holidays; Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, winter solstice, tec. This might be an opportunity to explore table top / still life photography.

For this challenge, show us your original shot (no post-processing, cropping, etc.), and then show us how it looks after you’ve worked your magic in the digital darkroom.

Be prepared to share the major editing steps / techniques you used to create the final shot.

Submit black and white digital images, sized for projection.

Thinking back to those dark and moody films from the 40’s and 50’s. Film noir was characterized by a bleak urban setting, low-key lighting scheme producing stark light/dark contrast and dramatic shadow patterning to create tension – that “something is around the corner” feeling. Think of the shadows of venetian blinds cast upon an actor, a wall or an entire scene; silhouettes of people seen through or an entire scene; silhouettes of people seen through or against a lit fog; faces obscured by shadow.

This is an opportunity for you to experiment shooting for mood; make it dark or eerie, maybe even spooky - after all, Halloween is coming. This is a chance to shoot in black and white, or to practice your black and white conversion in your digital darkroom.

This summer, your challenge is to document the impermanence of human creations; to look for art in places where nature is encroaching on things people have made. Explore your surroundings looking for rusting machines, plants growing in roads or cracks, rotting stairs … You’ll know it when you see it. For this assignment, don’t stage your image. Find your art in place.

We all know what nostalgia means, or what we think it is. How do you interpret it? The assignment is to create up to 3 images to interpret the theme "nostalgia".

n.

1. a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past
2. the condition of being homesick; homesickness

The American Heritage® Dictionary

1. a longing to go back to one's home, home town, or homeland; homesickness
2. a longing for something far away or long ago or for former happy circumstances

MirriamWebster's Dictionary

And some synonyms from the Oxford thesaurus:
longing/yearning/pining for the past, regret, regretfulness, reminiscence, remembrance, recollection, wistfulness,
homesickness.

The assignment is to use the technique of shooting reflections. The reflection can be the whole of your image, or a significant component. Think about the different places you see reflections - windows, mirrors, water, someone's eyes... and go out there and make an image. The following quote about photographing reflections may provide some inspiration:

The ’reflection‘ theme is a regular subject for camera club competitions, and rightly so. It’s a theme that's open to all sorts of imaginative interpretations - from abstract ideas to perfectly symmetrical mirror images.

The idea of including mirrors to reveal an part of a subject that is out of the framed picture itself is far from new – artists have been using it for hundreds of years in portraits and interior paintings. The effect can be to bring an intriguing illusion of the third dimension to a two-dimensional image. Done well, it can also inject a sense of mystery, compelling the viewer to look more closely – and so get drawn into your composition.

The idea of including mirrors to reveal an part of a subject that is out of the framed picture itself is far from new – artists have been using it for hundreds of years in portraits and interior paintings. The effect can be to bring an intriguing illusion of the third dimension to a two-dimensional image. Done well, it can also inject a sense of mystery, compelling the viewer to look more closely – and so get drawn into your composition.

Philip Dunn

The challenge of this assignment is to create an image that tells how you see / understand the abstract concept, "ECONOMY". For inspiration look up the definition of "economy". You'll be surprised at the range. If you still need inspiration, search Google's images, or search some stock photo sites. But, don't let yourself be limited by what you find. Let's all share our personal vision of "economy".