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"Your Assignment Is..." Photo Challenge
Now that the 365/52 Photo Challenge has ended, the Rockbridge Camera Club is starting a new challenge "Your Assignment is...", for 2022. Each month we will assign a photographic technique, and you may submit images taken using that technique.
Click here for description of the challenge and instructions on submitting your photos.
Click on the box below for the description of this month's assignment.
Click on any image to go to larger images and the photographers' full descriptions.
August 2023 Assignment: Skies
Ted Burrowes - Pond
Skies! They are important enough that many post-processors now provide a sky-swap feature. But this month the skies are not an important side-show, but the main act. So first I'll share a recent Maine sky, full of various kinds and sizes of clouds, where the accompanying landscape is the side-show, serving to reiterate a bit of the sky and provide some contrasting color and texture.
Ted Burrowes - Storm
And then an “angry” sky with a contrasting glimpse of blue sky, also from Maine. Such drama! And the landscape, while again mirroring the sky a bit, plays a considerably smaller role than in the first photo.
Ted Burrowes - Tetralogy
One of the features of skies that a single image cannot convey is their dynamic nature. Here is a tetralogy of sun-setting images that cover only about 25 minutes and do convey some of the time-sequence drama.
Ted Burrowes - Gray Sky
And then what about the often-forgotten gray sky? I took a shot of what appeared to be a uniformly gray cloud cover and then exaggerated several of the image's attributes in post-processing to get this rather pleasing (I think) abstraction that perhaps sends a quiet message that there can be beauty hiding in unexpected places.
Michael Smith - Colonial Heights After a Storm (1982)
I have been going through my photo prints from 1973 to 2000. In the 1980's, I had an apartment in Colonial Heights, VA. The attached photo was taken with my old Canon ftb, probably I used the 55MM lens and kodachrome 400 film. A storm had just passed though the area and I went to an area with a clearer line of site to take this image.
Michael Smith - Manset Harbor, ME Inclement Weather
The Manset Harbor shot was taken in June with my Canon 80D (settings ASA 100 and F8) on a stormy day. I used my Sigma 28-75 zoom and converted the image to B&W in Lightroom.
Michael Smith - Smith Mountain Lake Scene After Sunset
We were invited to spend a few days at Smith Mountin Lake this month. Preparations were underway for a nighttime movie on the dock when dusk approached. I grabed my Canon 80D and like one of the suggested videos, set the focus to infinity and tried different long exposure times to get the last 2 images. Post processing was done in Lightroom.
Michael Smith - Smith Mountain Lake Scene Near Dusk
Lad Sessions - Sky 1
All were sunsets, taken outside my front door at various times.
Lad Sessions - Sky 2
Lad Sessions - Sky 3
Lad Sessions - Sky 4
Judy Robichaux - Storm Clouds Over Lost River Farm
The dramatic “God Light" is highlighted by sunlight and framed at the bottom of the image by the mountain range and by a layer of mist/fog rising after a late Summer shower. The image was under-exposed to retain some detail in the bright clouds and also to silhouette the foreground.
Judy Robichaux - Drive By Shooting
Got these dramatic clouds with my iPhone AFTER I pulled over to capture the scene. Besides the clouds I also liked the cool tone of the sky contrasting with the warm tones of the vegetation and highway.
Judy Robichaux - The Flaming Bush
Some skies just aren’t unique enough to make a worthy background. I liked the base image of this mighty oak at Lost River Farm, but the sky was a miserly solid gray. So . . . with the freedom afforded even the least talented painter I put a sky of my own liking in the background.
Judy Robichaux - End Times
End Times - This very dramatic dead tree sits on a farm, and is visible from, I-64 between Clifton Forge & Covington. I’ve been at the farm many times to take pictures and am always drawn to this tree and it’s equally dead relative not far away. Usually a bright & blue sky fills the background in fair weather. In foul weather this is an extreme example of what might greet your lens. The brightness of the foreground provided a nice contrast to the sky, and I also liked the brightness of the topmost limb which draws the viewer’s eye and contrasts so vividly with the menacing background.
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