39° North Photography

How are you doing with the Scavenger Hunt assignment?  We have a little more than two days until the assignment deadline. I hope you’re having fun with this one. It’s a bit of a departure from the usual assignments and I’m finding it to be a little more challenging myself. How about you?

To recap, the topics for the assignment are as follows:

1. Lines
2. Orange
3. Water
4. Metal
5. Wood
6. Angles
7. Reflection
8. Soft
9. Sky
10. Two

You may choose any or all of the topics to photograph, but remember that you may submit only ONE PHOTO per topic. Please label each photo with the name of the topic to which it pertains. You can do full captions if you like, but the caption should include the name of the topic as listed above. Your Scavenger Hunt photos are due on Sunday, May 13. I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

Two

Water

Sky

Metal

Wood

Orange

The results of the Color Photography Assignment are in! We had a really great turnout for this assignment and a bunch of really great photos were submitted… check ‘em out! A hearty welcome to first-time participants Anita, Linda, and Lois!

As always, thumbnails for a few of the submitted photos can be found below. You can view a larger version of each photo by clicking on its thumbnail. To view all of the photos submitted for the Color assignment, click on the “View photos at SmugMug” link below the thumbnails. To get the full effect of these wonderful photos, I recommend viewing the SmugMug gallery as a slideshow by clicking on the Slideshow button at the upper right corner once you get to the SmugMug page.

Thanks to my super awesome partipants for these wonderful images!

What with spring springing up just about everywhere (at least here in the northern hemisphere), I thought this might be a good time to focus on COLOR. We’ve had several assignments here that involved SPECIFIC colors, but this one involves color in general.

Your mission for this assignment is to take photos in which COLOR is the primary subject. It can be a single color, various shades of one color, a couple of colors or lots of colors. Walk around your world, camera in hand, with your mind and your eye focused on color and see what jumps out at you. Get in close and fill the frame with color if you can. BE CREATIVE with color.

The rules for the assignment are, as always, quite simple:

1. Your photos have to be NEW, as in taken between now and Sunday evening, April 15 – NOT something you took last year, last week or even yesterday for that matter. New. Fresh. Now. No digging old photos out of your hard drive, ya hear? The idea is to take your camera out with the theme in mind and come up with the most interesting and creative COLOR shots that you possibly can.
2. The photos you submit must feature COLOR in some prominent way.

That’s it. If you’re in, start taking your COLOR pics now. Sometime between now and Sunday evening, April 15, email up to SEVEN of your favorites to me at 39DegN@gmail.com and put “COLOR” in the subject line. Please send your photos to me as large as possible and if I don’t already know your name, be sure to include it so I can give you credit. Feel free to include captions if you wish, but they are not required. The results of this assignment will be posted in the blog on Tuesday, April 17.

As always with these assignments, please keep in mind that you don’t need a fancy schmancy camera to play along. DSLR, point-and-shoot, camera phone… it doesn’t matter. My photography assignments are just for fun and to help you become a better photographer by training your eye to see specific things or by practicing certain techniques. There’s no critique involved, no judges, no winners, no prizes… just photos of COLORNESS with whatever camera you have available.

OK, let’s get busy!

Here are a few examples from my archives:

Are you ready for another assignment?

For many of us, this isn’t the best time of the year to be “out there” doing photography, so this time around let’s stay close to home and let’s get close. Your mission for this photography assignment is to take close-up photos around your home. Get arty. Get creative. Get close. Use that macro function if you have one. (It generally looks like a little flower. Read your camera’s manual if you’re not sure how to use this function. For additional macro tips, see my Shooting Macros With a Point-and-Shoot post). Find ordinary things around your home and make them look awesome: doorknobs, food, books, flowers, plants, shiny things, the dog, ceiling fans… whatever strikes your fancy. Just get close.

Warning: You might need to do a little bit of selective dusting for this assignment. Haha.

The rules for the assignment are, as always, quite simple:

1. Your photos have to be NEW, as in taken between now and SUNDAY evening, March  11 – NOT something you took last year, last week or even yesterday for that matter. New. Fresh. Now. No digging old photos out of your hard drive, ya hear? The idea is to take your camera out with the theme in mind and come up with the most interesting close-up shots around your home that you possibly can.
2. The photos you submit must feature close-up shots around YOUR home. I’d prefer photos of “things” not “people” but I’ll leave that up to you.

That’s it. If you’re in, start taking your UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL pics now. You have the rest of this weekend and through next weekend to complete this assignment. Sometime between now and Sunday evening, March 11, email up to SEVEN of your favorites to me at 39DegN@gmail.com and put  “UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL” in the subject line. Please send your photos to me as large as possible and if I don’t already know your name, be sure to include it so I can give you credit. Feel free to include captions if you wish, but they are not required. The results of this assignment will be posted in the blog on Tuesday, March 13.

As always with these assignments, please keep in mind that you don’t need a fancy schmancy camera to play along. DSLR, point-and-shoot, camera phone… it doesn’t matter. My photography assignments are just for fun and to help you become a better photographer by training your eye to see specific things or by practicing certain techniques. There’s no critique involved, no judges, no winners, no prizes… just UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL photos with whatever camera you have available.

OK, let’s get busy!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my wonderful blog readers!!

How are those photos coming along for the HOLIDAYS photography assignment? Just a quick reminder and recap – any holiday-related photo taken during the month of December, 2011 is eligible for the assignment. Email up to SEVEN of your favorite holiday photos to me at 39DegN@gmail.com no later than January 1 and the results will be posted in the blog on January 3.

Your challenge is to BE CREATIVE with your holiday photography, but most of all, HAVE FUN!