For our 100th Shooting Challenge, I challenged you to photograph anything you like any way you like. Here's what you choose to photograph when nobody is telling you what to do.
Just a little spoiler. You like to photograph sunsets, your pets and pretty things like flowers. Yes, oh mighty Shooting Challenge participants, even you cannot escape humanity's photographic grasp.
Despite your enhanced photography skills, your tastes have been engrained deep inside your DNA. But that's OK. There's absolutely nothing wrong with sunsets, your pets and pretty things like flowers.
Now, on with the challenge:
Winner - Flare On the Horizon
I was driving back from a trip to Bunya Mountains in Queensland Australia. There was absolutely no traffic on the road so I setup my tripod in the middle of the road and took the shot, hoping that it wouldnt be my last (if I am crushed by an on coming car). The shot turns out to be fantastic! Canon 550D, 18-55mm Kit Lens, f/3.5, 1/90sec, ISO 200
- Shahab Qamar
Grape Leaf
Shot at 4:40pm in an field of cab grapes. The leafs are just starting to turn annd this was back lit. The day had mild breezes and I had to wait for a lull to make the shot. Every fall I trapes the grape fields (off of Bennet lane located in upper Napa Valley CA) looking at the wonderful colors the turning leafs produce. I was attracted by the florescent colors and how insect like the leaves looked. And as always after I am done I head down to the local pub and have a pint...yeah a pint not a glass o'wine. Canon EOS-1D Mark 4, f/32, 1/40th, 100 mm Macro 2.8, ISO 400
- Rudy Goldstein
Machines at Rest
I'm always looking out of my window when I know its close to sunset, always waiting for something amazing. This time i knew it was gonna be a good one. The clouds were dark and menacing, remnants from a storm that just rolled through. I decided to pack up my gear and drive to the closet spot with a view. time was running out, the sun was close to setting. I knew i had to be quick, so there wasn't any time for setting up the tripod. I grabbed my camera, found some industrial subjects and shot away in bracketing mode. The thought of a sunset mixed with machines screamed HDR to me:) Hope you like the result. Nikon D700, ISO 400, Aperture: F/8, Lens: Nikon 70-200mm VR, Exposure: HDR image with 4 pictures, 1 EV steps, Handheld at 1/100 sec
- Tim Smith
Colorsplosion
What to do? Sunset? No, it's been done before. Still life? Portraits? Levitation? Do I go for uber complex, or just keep it simple? Who the hell decided to let us (the photographer) decide? After all, aren't we just supposed to capture the art? How do artists do it; create something from a lot of nothing? Then I got an idea. Hair Gel! and I came up with this, Abstraction. This is my attempt to figure out how a painter chooses the colors they work with.
I bought clear hair gel and squirted it on a Pyrex glass baking dish (you can just barely make out the rectangular logo in the center of the picture.) I used drops of food coloring in the hair gel and swirled, slashed and pulled it this way, and that to give it depth and dimension. I bought my wife a large, colorful boquet of flowers (her being none the wiser that I secretly planned to confiscate some petals) and used the petals on the bright orange paper that wrapped the boquet. The shot went like this: Orange paper with pink, orange, yellow, purple and red petals on it, with the hair gel/pyrex casserole dish suspended a foot above it by two pilsner beer glasses. I set my camera up on the tripod with a remote trigger, and used my telephoto lens to get as close as possible. I used a light diffuser at the edge of the glass dish so the sunlight would get to the flowers below, but not glare across the hair gel. This was alot of fun to play with since there were no expected results. Canon EOS Rebel T3i, EF - S55 - 250mm lens, f/5.0, 1/640 speed, ISO 100, Manual focus, no flash.
-R.J. Barrett
Drop
100 Challenges, how time flies... I have entered about half of them, and I must admit the ones I enjoy the most are the more technical ones... I was recently reading diyPhotography and there was a post about droplet photography, so when we had a free for all, I was really keen to try it again, plus my wife fell down the stairs and was in hospital and I kindly asked the nurse for the drip that was in my wife's arm, which makes creating the drops a lot easier. Nevertheless, here is the shot, I wanted to go for something more artsy using negative space etc, here is my interpretation of the water drop challenge. Nikon D90, Nikor 105mm Micro 2.8 VR, 0.5 sec exposure at f10, Flash triggered manually while shutter is open.
- Nils Rohwer
Gone Fishing
I was doing a photo shoot for a family out on the lake. We scheduled the session for sunset to capture the color of the trees, which were at their peak of oranges, reds and yellows. We were losing the light and finishing up, when I noticed this woman fishing and the gorgeous golden color on the water. I stopped to take a few photos, trying to think about the past challenges. I took this photo with my Canon Rebel EOS Digital with the flash off. I wanted to capture the the reflection of the sunset in the water, while silhouetting the woman fishing. Some of the challenges I tried to capture with this photo are "Sunrise, Sunset," "Golden Hour,' "Fall," "Silhouettes," and "R&R." All the while, the three year old little girl, who I was supposed to be photographing, kept talking about how smelly and fishy the lake was. I am amazed I could get any good photos, as her commentary kept me laughing.
-Jennifer Bryant
100 Geralds
The challenge here was to have 100 of me in a single photo. What I did was place the camera on a tripod, set focus to infinite, manually set the white balance, aperture and shutter speed. So that every shot will have the same consistent look/exposure. Shots were then taken with the camera set on timer and triggered via a wireless remote. And then it's; pose - shoot, re-pose - shoot. Repeat until I reach 100 shots. After taking 100 shots, these shots were then merged together via Photoshop. Since the theme here is "100" to commemorate the 100th week of this competition, I figured this photo would be somewhat appropriate. Canon EOS 50D, 18-55mm kit lens, Phottix wireless remote trigger, 1/200
ISO 200
-Gerald Cheong
Cat In a Bag
Taken with a Nikon F4, 50mm 1.8 lens @ 1.8, and a Nikon SB24 flash Kodak TMax 400 film processed myself and scanned with an Epson v500. It was actually one of the last shots on the roll, I just decided to grab a few random shots of the cat to finish off the roll, because I am impatient and wanted to process it immediately.
-Joey D'Anna
Rainbow Star Drop
Here's my contribution to the 100th week of shooting! My muse has told me for a long time now (in fact, since 2007 when I made my first water droplet splash photo) to make more of these with better equipment than I had back then (compacts..). I've now taken the opportunity to try out the same technique as back then, but with equipment many times better. This time, I used a Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM, shooting with an external flash (430EXII) fired wirelessly through the 7D's Speedlite transmitter. I shot with the flash from the left side of the scene (quite close to the water), slightly slanted towards the camera to try to capture the flash in one or more droplets (the stars). On the other side of the flash (direction in which it fired) I had a cardboard box and plain A4 white sheets of paper lining it (home-made 'studio' I usually use for (macro) shooting smaller objects) to bounce the light back. In the background I had a sheet of paper with stripes drawn with ordinary highlight markers, and beneath the water splash I had a soup bowl standing on top of another soup bowl that was upside-down, which, in turn, was standing on an upside-down turned cooking pan under the kitchen tap. Camera settings were ISO100, f/20, 1/250s, 18MP JPEG L (yeah, I should've used RAW); +2/3 flash compensation, internal camera flash not used.
- Christopher Gull
Thanks to everyone who participated this week or any other week. You made turning 100 pretty damn fun. The full galleries are below. The wallpapers are on flickr.
Mark Wilson is the founder of Philanthroper, a daily deal site for nonprofits.