This whole week was dedicated to visuals, and improving our skills as photographers! Since our typical DC’s are usually visual assignments (or at least the ones I choose are), we stepped up our game in trying out new techniques. The first assignment I chose to do I tried to apply a tip from the recommended book “TEN: Ten Ways to Improve Your Craft. None of Them Involves Buying Gear” by David Duchemin.

The tip I chose to use was “Change my perspective by changing yours“. The daily create I applied this too was “Take a picture of your greatest success or triumph“. For me this was understanding buddhism. As a girl I was never raised in a religious or spiritual home. For me my families religion was education. So when it came to finding a spiritual path I was sort of on my own, and tried a lot of things out ranging everywhere from Wiccan to Christianity and everything in between. But when it came to buddhism I had a really hard time understanding what not only the history of the religion was but also its practice. It took me almost 6 months but I finally understood it from every aspect. By far one of my greatest successes. So for this picture I tried a higher angle, which I felt gave the Buddha more dimension, instead of it looking simply as a statue against a wall.

The second daily create I chose was “Take a picture of something brand new. Like Shiny.” Again I wanted to apply one more of the tips from “TEN: Ten ways to improve your Craft. None of Them Involves Buying Gear“, so I chose “Look into the light” I had just bought myself some new nail polish and a new candle and candle votive. Of course the nail polish was shiny and the candle when lit, created this beautiful soft light that really complemented the color of the nail polish. So next I had to decide how to get them all together and really look like they were meant to be together, like they really told a story (as superficial as it may be). So I placed the soft pink nail polish against the candle light and gold votive and I think it all came together really well. The lighting is what I am especially proud of in that I think it really brings everything together in a very soft, feminine tone.

And for my third and final daily create, I chose “Take a photo of someone other than yourself using your favorite type of technology“. And I chose to apply Duchemin’s tip “Look into the light“. Now as much as I love my dog Jones, he is almost impossible to get to sit still, so the fact that I can see his face clearly in this picture instead of just a white blur is a feat in itself. But how I applied the tip to this photo was to use the backlighting of my window to really emphasize my dog and make him the subject of the photo. He is of course wearing my camera around his neck, and it is a Diana+ camera that I bought a while back. These types of camera’s were originally just toys but have actually come to establish a name for themselves when it comes to taking “vintage-esque”photo’s. I have know a few photographer’s to actually add some lomography photos to their portfolio’s as well! So as far as using jones and my favorite piece of technology, this is what I came out with:

I can’t wait to see what next weeks dc’s have in store!