2017 Monthly Themes

Theme assignments are designed to move you out of your comfort zone to try something new.  Some themes are selected to be relatively easy while others are more challenging and may require special equipment (e.g. neutral density filters) or familiarity with editing software. Ideally, members should bring showcase quality theme photos to club meetings, but quality is less important than demonstrating you have learned from the challenges. Theme images should be recent, taken within the past year, as they are meant to reflect our growth in the art and craft of photography.

Please note:  To share theme and other photos, please read How to Submit Images

Anything Vingage
There has been a growing popularity of photography invoking a celebration of vintage America and it so happens that the Gainesville area offers many opportunities for photographing subjects invoking vintage nostalgia.  For this theme, consider photographing people in period dress, small towns and cities, cabins, barns, old homes, lighthouses, diners, churches, service stations, cars/trucks, tractors, farm scenes, fairs, tools, parades, settings with old signs, etc. including small towns, abandoned locations, Dudley Farm, vintage cars and trucks, country stores, and many other settings.

Food and/or Drink
Your aim for this theme is to make our mouths water by showing photographs of food and/or beverages. As well as the finished product you can show all the starting ingredients, in-process shots as the food is prepared, and then the final dish. Or perhaps you will picture a meal from your favorite restaurant. Backlight is key to texture and making a dish look appetizing. Photos with the light skimming across the plate from behind makes the food look fresh and appetizing. There are numerous on-line resources, here's one of many that is a good start: http://content.photojojo.com/photo-technique/tips/food-photography-tips/

Shoot from One Spot
Where is the best place to take a photograph? The answer is “The spot where you are standing!”  Pick a location to plant your tripod.  It could be outside your front door, in a local garden, at a downtown street corner, anywhere. Once you plant your tripod, challenge yourself to look, shoot, and look ever more closely. You can change lenses, the height of your tripod, the orientation of your camera, etc. See what is out there when you really slow down and take time to look.

Street Photography
Street photography features chance encounters and random events occurring within public places and at its very essence it is witnessing and capturing an once-in-a-lifetime moment as it unfolds in front of you. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people when depicting an object or environment that projects a decidedly human character.

Technique -- A commonly used focusing technique in street photography is zone focusing -- setting a fixed focal distance and shooting from that distance.  The traditional (but not exclusive) focal lengths of 28 mm to 50 mm are used particularly for their angle of view and increased depth of field, but there are no exclusions to what might be used.  Zone focusing also facilitates shooting "from the hip" i.e. without bringing the camera up to the eye.  Alternatively waste-level finders and the articulated LCD screens of digital cameras allow for composing or adjusting focus without bringing unwanted attention to the photographer.

Street photography can be terrifying to photographers. Push yourself outside the boundaries of comfort. Don't listen to that inner voice that says stop. Go beyond it by controlling your fear.  Consider converting you images to black and white for that classic street photography look.

Macro
Challenge yourself to take close-up or near photography with this month’s theme. Macro photography has become a very popular area of photography. Generally speaking, taking close-up photographs of small things or areas is call “macro photography” and is basically photography magnified. It is generally recognized as “macro” when you are increasing the size of an object in your photograph from about half life-size, as represented on the image sensor, to five times life-size. In other words, we are showing a subject in an unnatural perspective, since we would never really be that close when observing the subject ourselves.
Macro subjects can be found everywhere including flower gardens, parks, our own homes, our backyards, etc. All of these locations and more are full of macro subjects waiting to be discovered. For example, macro compositions can include close-ups of insects, leaves, flowers, household items, crystal glass, butterflies, feathers, sea shells, slab agates, jewelry, water drops, etc.
When composing a macro photo, use a tripod and try using manual focus in combination with Live View if your camera has this capability. In many cases, it is helpful to use an external light source, i.e., small LED light. You don’t have to have a macro lens, extension tubes, or magnifying filters. Manual focus your lens as close as possible, check your composition and focus, and crop your photo if necessary for the macro effect. Macro subjects are magical enough without using artistic filters and overly creative processing.

Abstract Autos
Abstract photography isolates a portion of a natural scene and may remove its context from the viewer. It may involve the use of color, light, shadow, texture, shape and/or form to convey an impression. If you look at a photo and a voice inside you says “What is it?”….Well, there you go. It is an abstract photograph. This month, we will apply these elements of abstract photography to automobiles. They can be old, new, or used. The viewer is often unable to see the whole object. Be aware of reflections, backgrounds, and glare in the compositions. Use of tripods and exposure bracketing are helpful.

Working the Subject
Some subjects are fairly straight forward to photograph and don’t challenge you to look beyond your initial approaches to composition.  With others, however, a single composition never seems satisfying.  For this theme, find an interesting subject that allows you to experiment and discover multiple compositions or interpretations that work. Start out shooting simple, perhaps mundane, compositions working your subject until your creative juices start to flow; then start creating different compositions by changing viewpoints, lenses or focal lengths, backdrops or props, or lighting. 

Create Your Own
This has got to be the easiest theme ever devised in the history of camera clubs.  There are, however, two caveats (darn, there’s always a catch).  You may not use a theme already selected for this year, and your theme pictures must all relate to a specific idea or concept – no “open” category themes allowed.  If you haven’t figured it out, everyone creating their own theme is a way for the themes committee not to have to do any work next year.  So if you come up with a good theme, perhaps it will be honored by having it again next year.

Windows and Doors
Doors and windows call us to be photographed.  They tell us so much about a building’s history and culture, and they are everywhere. Doors and windows are big, small, plain, colorful, old, new, modern, and antique; they come in all shapes and forms.  Look for patterns, look for art.  Sometimes you will find open doors and windows, sometimes closed, with or without people, and even some times the door or the window are gone, but you know where they were supposed to be.

Motion
Motion may be captured by blurring or freezing images to show speed or the subject’s movement through space. Motion can also be used to communicate mood and to focus the viewer’s attention.  Consider the following techniques.

Panning -- While panning, a photographer sets the shutter to a slow speed — anywhere between 1/15thto 1/30th of a second — and moves the camera at the same speed as the subject. By doing this, the subject will appear more in focus and the background will be blurred;

Freezing Motion – To capture a jump in midair, a spray of water, a bird in mid-flight, a drop of water hitting a puddle, etc. set the shutter speed of the camera as high as possible. Setting high shutter speed (over 1/1000 is ideal) means that the camera is letting in light for a very small fraction of a second. That minuscule slice of time is the only thing recorded.  This will be substantially easier in bright natural light;
 
Long Exposures -- To show movement with a long shutter speed is to use a tripod and set your camera’s shutter speed to something closer to 20 to 30 seconds or longer. If you are in a crowded location, some people will inevitably remain stationary while others move. Anything motionless, like a building, a street sign, and markings on the street or certain people will be in focus while life seems to be passing them by.  It may be necessary to use a neutral density filter of 3 or more stops to achieve the desired shutter speed.

Astrophotography
For this theme, we are looking for photos of the night sky or night scenes that include stars and/or astronomical objects. Although astrophotography is a very easy hobby in which to get started, it can be difficult to master at its highest level. But, don't let this discourage you. Start out easy, shoot some star-trails with your camera on a tripod. Rick will present an introductory seminar at the February meeting on "How to Photograph the Night Sky".
There is a lot of information on the web, some of it very technical and advanced. This link is a good start as it shows landscapes with stunning night skies: http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/introduction-to-astrophotography/