Shadows. They're our dark doppelgängers tracking our every step. They're also excellent subjects for your photographs from last week's Shooting Challenge.
Winner - Tree Bleach
Ryan here and I thought I would enter one of these camera contests. The only thing that has been stopping me is that my camera is only a mere phone, and a terribly outdated one at that (LG enV2). So what could come out of its 2MP lens(dont even ask about the ISO, probably on automatic)? Usually not much. But every once and a while i get an interesting (yet semi grainy) idea. So while out at the college today I noticed how well the shadows of the trees and bushes played together. And in this 2D world I could be seemingly behind the tree, looking like a shy, strange creature in this fantasy. At least it gives me that surreal feeling. Hopefully it will be like that for you too.
-Ryan Alishio
The Strange Girl
It helps if the weather would cooperate. I had a number of ideas of possible photos, but every morning and every late afternoon had clouds covering the sun preventing any shadows. So, to meet this weeks challenge, I backed the car out of the driveway, and turned on the headlights, and had my sons provide me with some shadows to work with. We tried sword fighting, and other poses, but the duel nature of the shadows cast by the headlights were not the best. So we started trying still shots trying to take advantage of the duality of the shadows. In this one we created some sort of shadow monster walking out of my son's shadow. Canon EOS REBEL T2i , Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30), Aperture: f/4.0, ISO Speed: 800
-John Hays
Jump!
A bright, sunny day on Lido beach, Venice. Shot with a Nikon D50- Sigma 10-20 at 10mm, ISO 200, 1/4000 @ f / 4.0.
-Evan Kitaljevich
Memories
This photo is obviously a photo of a photo. My wife and I took our dog for a walk on Saturday night. Like many walks, I brought by Leica M6 (and 40mm f/1.4 lens) along with us - just in case. I managed to snag this one of us while we waited for the dog to pee. I can't remember my exposure settings, but I know that I developed the film (Tri-X 400) in Kodak Xtol for 7.75 minutes. The print was exposed for 12s @ f8. This snapshot of the print was taken with my Canon G11.
-Trevor Oleniuk
Quick Game
I took this photo yesterday while playing tennis with my friend. I thought it is a cool way of putting a shadow into context with the tennis court, the net, the color and him holding his tennis racket. Camera: NIKON D3100, Lens: 50mm F /1.8, Focal Length: 50mm, Aperture: F/2.2, Exposure 1/4000 sec.
-Chamath Guneratne
Samurai Joe
My setup was a pretty simple one. We perched a led flash light (the kind you see at the Home Depot registers) in a empty paper towel tube on a bookshelf acting as kind of a spotlight. I had left my tripod at home and was using a kind of gaming rocking chair to hold the camera still and it gave it a little blur. Joe, the shadow person, and I had all these grand plans of using his action figures to recreate scenes from super hero movies. Then after an hour of shooting, I read the challenge page to see it needed to be a human figure. I tell Joe this and he grabs the samurai sword (from no where I add) and kind of makes this strange grunt noise which I assumed was hostile. I did the logical thing and told him to stay still, killed the lights, and perched myself for 25 long seconds in which Joe quietly muttered swears and curses in my name. All in all got some great super hero shadow shots and a great story for my first shooting challenge.
Nikon D3000, iso 200, Manual Mode, 25 second exposure, no flash.
-Greg Pugliese
Dark Hour
So when i think of shadows for some reason i think of dark things, so being that this weeks shooting challenge had to do with shadows i decided to do a very dark scene. I told my girlfriend that i was going to shoot her for the challenge but i really meant im going to shoot you lol, so after telling her to hold a rosary under my red flash light this was the result, i used a wii gun in order to create the shadow of a gun. 17mm ISO 1600, T2i F4
-Ian Carlos Delacruz
The GIant
Attached is a photo of my doppelgänger. Benjamin and I hiked the 6.5 miles or so up to Paradise Park in Oregon. We saw the mighty Mount Hood laid bare. Exposed. We were no longer afraid. For proof of my newfound courage, I had Ben act as the tripod for my HTC Evo cellular phone. There is an 'Aqua' filter.
-Trevor Butenhoff
Thanks to everyone for participating! Or should I say...thanks to everyone's secretly dark nature for participating! The full gallery is below and wallpapers are on flickr.
Mark Wilson is the founder of Philanthroper, a daily deal site for nonprofits.