Assignment Suggestions

[Skaperen]

It seems to be somewhat dead around here. Yeah, there are recent posts, some even today. But I don't see much in recent assignments. I thought they were weekly (e.g. posted Monday).

What I am seeing suggests to me that the forum software might be making it harder. So I'll just make a newbie suggestion that might make things work better.

The assignment of the week should be posted as a new thread with a title giving the full date in the title like "Assignment for 2009-12-14 - whatever theme". Then this thread needs to be made into a sticky for the week, and the previous one UNstuck. Does an administrator need to do the sticky/unsticky settings? Use the ISO date format (year-month-date) because it avoids the confusion of other date formats.

This way the active assignment clearly stays up there regardless of how much activity exists on past assignments. Add the rule NOT to make titles of other threads look like an assignment title.

 

[Skaperen]

I had this little idea for a photo way back in the early 1980s when I was doing film. This would have been hard to do with film, requiring multiple exposure on film or prints. I just never got around to it. Now with digital and computer post-processing, it seems like it should be easy. The hardest part might be finding the correct scene (but that's always the important part of the art of photography).

The mechanics of my idea is this.

Shoot a waterfall or similar scene with a single action going on that is (mostly, maybe) white in color. It might be a close shot or a wider scene with the waterfall being a small part of it. Use a tripod. Set the shutter timing to partly blur the water, but not do so to the extreme of smoothing the water completely. Take many shots, bracketing the shutter timings (while keeping the same exposure, so this also means the aperture would be bracketed unless you are going for some DoF effect in which case you might need some ND filters).

On the computer take the red channel of one shot, the green channel of another shot, and the blue channel of a third shot, and combine those into a new photo. With water action being different in each, and everything else stationary, you should end up with what looks like multi-colored water coming over the falls.

That's the basic idea. The challenge is how to make this become really awesome with some combination of artistic shooting skills, and post-processing skills. For shooting, be creative. It doesn't really have to be a waterfall. Maybe waves on a beach. It doesn't even have to be water. How about lightning in a thunderstorm. Or a starry night astrophoto including or near the polar star point for your hemisphere. Or a city night scene taken over many hours with different window lights going on and off.

In post-processing, you might vary the coloration of the selected shots, instead of just combining red, green, and blue. For example you could combine red+green from one, green+blue from another, and blue+red from the 3rd, to soften the color effects. Or perhaps even more complex mixes, with variable color levels and/or more than 3 images mixed, so that you have a lot more colors and maybe even rainbows in the result. Do try to keep the overall scene itself at normal color giving the illusion that the colorizing happened at some specific location ... unless you've come up with a composition where even re-colorizing the whole thing makes it great.

What scene can you find that makes this work?

 

[TheBenzMan10]

Automobiles, anything that moves would be a cool assignment

 

[kanskanos]

i can do it

 

[seaain.gray]

"Single (Lens) for Week of ... to ..."

Idea here is post a photo every day for a week taken with the same lens (preferably same FL). I have participated in this elsewhere where it was done for an entire month which is very, very hard. It assumes a start and an end date of course. There is quite a bit of benefit to this exercise, or has been for me. Just a suggestion.

seaain

 

[jaydensmith95]

Thanks to all

 

[tonic289]

You can take pictures of food markets together with their fruit stands and vendors. Then you can make a Blurb photography book dealing with the subject which covers the most populated cities like Washington DC, New York and California. You can entitle your book or gallery show, ' 'BIG TIME' ENTERPRENEURS FORSAKEN !! lol or 'BIGTIME' ENTERPRENEURS ABASED. lol

 

[designerfoo]

How about a christmas assignment?

 

[unpopular]

HEROIC SOUP PACKET!!!!!

One of my favorite self assignment was to take a lens with moderately short non-macro focus, like maybe 6-12" ... whatever you have, and preset the focus to minimum, don't use zoom and focus by moving the camera.

Minimum Focus - a set on Flickr

I used an enlarging lens in barrel, so focus wasn't an option. It's the one exercise I learned the most from.

 

[cmariee]

Celebration... throwing confetti or balloons into the air or jumping for joy
Something that suits the current weather wherever you are.
Your favourite place(s)
Your favourite people.

 

[D7shooter]

How about this for an assignment, "reflection". That could mean a mirror, a puddle, a window pane of glass or even the reflection in someone's eye. The catch? it has to be a reflection that tells the story of your favorite subject. For instance, animals or industry. How about politics or romance? Whatever your favorite subject is to photograph, make it visible in a reflection. Just a thought.

 

[sniper x]

As soon as someone comes up with an assignment I'm in!

 

[KmH]

Since it's been 4 years since this thread was last posted to, I would not recommend you hold your breath while you wait.

Take photos of incense smoke and then post process, color the shots.

Droid

 

[Bhoert]

We should try and revive this chat, I love the idea of a smaller challenge along with the monthly ones, There are also lots of great ideas in this forum im sure many people would like to try out.

 

[Shinnen]

Hi ,
I would suggest that the assignments are based on the need for entrants to exhibit skill in a specific type of photograph, i.e. mood, contrast, reflection, perspective, panorama, lighting, macro, atmosphere, motion, themes (architecture, hands, faces, traffic, streets, trees, insects, etc.). I've seen assignments on other forums that are so vague, that I could send almost any photo, and make a case for it fitting the 'requirement'. My purpose in joining assignments would be the encouragement to become involved in areas of photography that I normally would not explore, as a learning experience.
Thanks,
........ john