Week 50: For the Love...

... of our camera. This week, week 50, it's our cameras that are the centre of attention over at Picture Inspiration. I don't have a great collection of cameras. Apart from Canon EOS 550D, I have a an old Voigtländer I found at a thrift/second hand shop for a song, my parents' old Minolta Hi-Matic 7sII, an old Nikon FA, and my latest aquisition, and old twin lens Delmonta. I bought it last summer in London, mainly because I thought it would look nice in my bookshelf. But I also bought two rolls of films for it. Haven't tried it out yet, but one day I will. I just hope I'll find a place here that can develop those old films...

Taking pictures of this camera, and processing them into black & white, reminded me of my other blog dedicated to black & white photography, which I have totally neglected for months. I should try and bring it back to life - or maybe just give up on it and delete it...

Winter light

It's week 48 of Picture Inspiration already, and this week's prompt is "Winter Light". I had taken these pictures on the Sunday before, actually, but "winter light" was exactly what I had in mind on that early (well not that early, really) Sunday morning walk.

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. (Ashley Montagu)

So, four weeks left to go. Taking a look at the statistics in the classroom gallery, I managed to take/post a total of 29 pictures for 25 of the prompts, and the last one I posted was in week 40 (two months ago? Really??). That makes it just slightly more than half of the prompts. It's more than I thought, actually, but much less than I intended. But I'm really really determined now to complete the last 4 prompts now.

Picture Inspiration Catch Up

The days and weeks just fly by at the moment, and I have so many things I want and try to do, that I never quite seem to manage to keep up with everything, as with Picture Inspiration. But although I've been bad with keeping up posting, both here and in the forum, I have been taking pictures all the time. So here's a bit of a catch up of the last four weeks:

Week 37: Texture love. In week 37 we were exploring textures, that is post processing photos with the use of texture images. Which is something I love and have been doing a lot, even though not so much recently. The mist on that Saturday morning made the shore on the other side of Lake Zürich completely disappear, leaving the little sailing boats looking a little lost and giving the whole scene a sort of timeless feel. I used three different textures to enhance this feel, two by Shadowhouse Creations, and one by Flypaper Textures.

Week 38: A Delicate Balance. The task was to find a delicate balance between image and texture. It was a grey morning, and I loved how the mist hung in between the colourful trees. However, the original picture was rather bland and boring, and needed some processing to bring out the colours. Apart from the usual levels, saturation and light adjustments, I used a subtle texture by Shadowhouse Creations to make the autumn colours shine and to add to the texture of the trees, without making the additional texture too obvious.

Week 39: Leaving Textures. We were leaving texture processing and were focusing on mere texture alone, which the season offers in abundance at this time of year. The leaves all around were of course perfect for this prompt. Not only are they in itself full of texture, but they cover the ground with a blanket of texture as well.

Week 40: Grateful Day. We don't have Thangsiving over here, but this does not mean that we don't have a lot of things to be grateful for, big and small, essential and trivial. So what am I thankful for? There are things I take for granted but which aren't really so self-evident, things that could be better - but also a lot worse, things I worked hard for and deserve, and things where I'm really just lucky, little luxuries that simply make me feel good. Among the last is the fact that, despite my job and long daily commute and all the other every day stuff, I still find time and energy to be creative. And it add so much value to my life.

We received the prompt for Week 41 yesterday. And this one is really going to be a challenge!

Week 35 ~ Oh my Gourd!

This week (week 35) at Picture Inspiration is all about the gorgeous pumpkin: Let us celebrate the gorgeous gourd!, Tracey declared, and wanted us to focus on "relationships" with our subject matter.

Now we don't have Halloween here, and so pumpkins aren't quite so "big" a thing as in other places. But we still like to use them as seasonal decorations, bringing the beautiful warm autumn colours into our homes with them. But we most of all love to eat them - as tasty, delicious, creamy, rich pumpkin soup (with curry, a splash of cream and some pumpkin seeds in this case).

I had a lot of fun with these pumpkins (and I'm sure I'll have lots more, as I intend to devote some of my weekend to the intense study of them, trying to sketch, draw, and paint them). I took so many photos that I risked the soup getting all cold in the meantime. I had a hard time deciding which photo to chose for the prompt, but finally went with the one above - and made a little collage with the rest :).

And I got to enjoy my lovely soup. It was delicious (and still hot enough). My relationship with my subject? - Very satisfying! :) Now I'm really looking forward to the weekend and to bringing those shapes and colours on to paper.

And I really intend to keep up with Picture Inspiration. I've been trying to, but didn't do a very good job so far, I'm afraid. I've posted some pictures in the group pool, have taken some more but never got round to process, let alone post them, and with quite a few prompts didn't even manage to take a picture at all in the first place. It's less than 20 weeks to go now, and I will do my best to keep it up now for the rest of the course, and take and post a picture each week, both here and in the group pool. It should be doable, right!?

A special place & a challenge

Last week's (week 31) theme for Picture Inspiration was "extreme crop". The challenge was to use a crop we would not normally do, would maybe not even think of. When I stepped into the church of San Giovanni Battista in Mogno, Ticino, last weekend, I knew I had found my challenge. And it certainly was a challenge, as the room was so stunning, I naturally wanted to capture it all.

And of course, I did shoot it all, inside and out. You didn't really expect me not to, did you? :). The Chiesa Di San Giovanni Battista (Church of Saint John the Baptist) is located in the small village Mogno deep up the Maggia Valley. It was built by renowned Swiss architect Mario Botta between 1992 and 1996, after an avalanche had destroyed the old baroque village church as well as a great number of houses in 1986.

It's a fascinating building, which stands out but still fits in. It is built of stone, as are so many traditional houses and buildings in the valley. The stones are white marble and dark gneiss, both from stone quarries in the valley.

It's a small church, with room for just about 15 people. But then, the village of Mogno is a small place, and today, not even inhabited all year round anymore.

The interior is plain and simple. But the grey and white and the lines form fascinating geometrical patterns and the rooms feels so bright and airy.

It's a special place, a magical place, even if you're not very religious.

The church has no windows, all the light comes through the round glass roof, bathing the interior of the church in the light of sunny Ticino.

The light and shadows add to the geometrical patterns, forming new, dynamic lines on the walls.

We spent quite some time there, in and around the church. But eventually, we had to leave the place, as we had a train to catch later on. So off we drove, but took a quick stop further down the road, to cast one last glance at the place.

It was a wonderful day, and a wonderful weekend, and hopefully, not the last time I visited this special spot.

Week 15: Double Vision

I just realised that we're actually already in week 16 - and there's me, thinking that I'd finally managed to keep up... Well, I still have time till Thursday to take and post a picture for this week, but here's last week for now. The theme was "double vision", looking at a subject from different perspectives, shooting it from up and down and creating a diptych.

It's early summer (how time flies!!) and this means it's poppy season. Yay! I just love poppies. They're so cheerful. One of the meanings of red poppies in the language of flowers is pleasure. And they're certainly a pleasure to look at. They just always make me smile!

Other meanings for poppies:
Poppies (general): Eternal sleep, oblivion, imaginaton
Poppies (red): Pleasure, consolation
Poppies (white): Consolation, sleep
Poppies (yellow): Wealth, success

Picture Inspiration: Catching up

A little bit, at least. We're already in Week 15 (how time flies!!), and so far, I actually managed to do and upload a meagre three images. High time for a bit of catching up! I'm cheating a little bit, though. Instead of going to take the pictures, I'm going through the pictures I recently took, looking for some fitting the topics. There are quite a few that match pretty well, so I think that's quite okay, actually :).

So here's a little catching-up on some of the themes:

Week 4: How Things Stack Up

I tidied up the kitchen cupboard, and decided to store these bright green and light blue coffee cups and saucers in the basement, as they're never used anyway. I'd need some cardboard box to put them in. I just recycled a whole bunch of cardboard boxes two weeks ago. Isn't it just typical?!

Week 10: Dishing It Out

I think I actually took this picture especially for this prompt. My kitchen. I seem to spend an unproportionally great amount of time with washing up the dishes. I really don't know where the stuff's always coming from. And I really wish I had a dishwater... But at least it's all bright and colourful in my kitchen :)

Week 11: In the Distance

When I was standing up there, taking pictures of Schloss Schönbrunn and the city of Vienna behind it, I thought that the big church in the far distance was the famous Stephansdom. It was only when I was looking at the pictures more closely back home again, that I realised it wasn't, but some other church. Well, I have no sense of direction, and I'm shortsighted... :)

Week 13: From the Ground Up

Lovely daisies in the beautiful park of Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna. It was a very hot and sunny day, and the cool woods was very welcoming.

A variaton of the theme:

I very much prefer to watch these from the ground up than being up there in one of the little cars for sure!

Week 14: Bird's Eyes View

Not a bird's eyes view, but what a bird up in one of those branches would see, when looking down on the Burgring on a rainy day in Vienna.

I really liked those water puddle reflections, which were a bit of a consolation for it being such cold, grey and rainy day when I arrived in Vienna the week before last. And I had the theme in the back of my mind, so I took quite a few of these shots :)

And from a real bird's view perspective:

Landing at Zurich Airport on a grey and rainy day. I've got such a terrible sense of direction (and geography) that I'm afraid I can't even tell which town this is. But it looks cool from up there :).

I meant to post only one picture per theme, but somehow, it turned out a lot more. I've just got so many pictures, and sometimes, I simply couldn't decide which one I liked best. There's still a lot of catching up to do. I've been struggling to keep up with all of my 52 projects, and it's been quite a busy past few weeks, but I still intend to catch up with all the past themes after my holiday in June/July, and keep up with it all for the second half of the year :)

~ seeing double ~

Now that I have my camera back, I'm trying to catch up with everything I missed in the last 3 weeks. We're now in week 6 at Picture Inspiration, and so far, I managed exactly two of the prompts (i.e. week 1 and 2). Today, I read through the weekly inspiration message for this week, and realised that I had just the perfect photo for this week's prompt "seeing double".

I went on an early morning walk around a lake nearby and the surface of the lake was so calm and smooth that the woods along it were perfectly reflected on it. The colours aren't exactly very pretty at the moment, with everything still rather brown and bare and only just starting to turn green and coming into bloom, so a little bit of post processing experimenting was perfect with these shots. In the above picture, I tried to achieve a vintage 1970s effect, following an e-course lesson.

In the image below, I used a scratchy texture technique to enhance the "old black and white photo feel".

So there are still weeks 3, 4 and 5 to catch up. Hope I'll manage over the weekend :-)

~ rhythm ~

I've signed up for yet another course involving yet another 52 week's project, along with 52 of twenty eleven (where I'm again behind) and 52 weeks of no colour (where I'm just about keeping up). The new project is Picture Inspiration at Big Picture Classes. I enjoyed Picture the Holidays and Picture Winter but the daily prompts were a bit stressful and really just too much for me. But once a week should be manageable. I hope :-).

The course started last week and this (the second's) week prompt is rhythm. We were given a number of definitions and had to translate one of them into a picture. I chose the definition pattern of masses alternating with voids. I love bare winter trees (I only really came to appreciate them now, after I got my camera and finally learned to see), the mass of dark branches in all sizes and the voids in between them. I took the picture a few weeks ago, but I just thought it fitted the prompt so well and I did the processing today :-).

For week 1, we had to take a self portrait so that we could all see each other, as we are going to spend the next 52 weeks together. A good idea, of course, only that I don't really feel much like taking selfies at the moment. I have no energy at all right now (health issues...) and I'm tired all the time. I took some pics in the bath room mirror and then tried some b&w processing and added a framte, until I got a result I could halfway live with. I also added some Gaussian blur under the pretext of softening it up but it's really just an excuse to disguise the fact that the picture isn't really quite sharp but slightly out of focus.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the journey and I hope that I'll manage to keep up :-). I'm really happy about seeing many of the "girls" from Picture the Holidays and Picture Winter again in the new course and taking the journey with them. I know I'll find lots of inspiration in the class gallery. I also like the community spirit in these classes and I really hope that I'll manage to keep up with everyone's uploads and with commenting better than I did in the last two classes.

The quote is by Cecil Taylor, the textures and the frame are from The CoffeeShop Blog and Flypaper Textures.