Beginning

So here's my picture for the first challenge.

I've been playing video games for most of my life. I've also been playing with cars, and for even longer. When I was a kid, I played Pole Position with a plastic racing helmet on my head.

Simon is only three, but so far he's following his dad: obsessed with cars and now racing them, at least in video games so far.

Anyway, I have my thoughts on this picture. I'd like to hear yours. Please. It wasn't really fair of me to take a picture of my son for the first one. Critique the picture, not the kid!

Beginning

So this isn't the most profound statement or anything, at least maybe not on the surface.  I decided the way I'd like to participate in these challenges is to go about my usual shooting routine, and choose an image that suits the theme in some way.  I like to be spontaneous, rather than set up shots.

Here's why I chose this shot for this week's challenge.

On Wednesday, while sitting at Seven Saints partaking in the weekly whiskey lunch, I noticed the lighting on the folks at a table behind us.  I happened to have my camera handy so I snuck in a few shots of them while they were chatting and looking at the menus.  This is not something I've been comfortable doing, taking pictures of strangers.  I didn't ask permission, I didn't apologize afterward, I just took a picture of something I felt was interesting and in the moment quite striking.

So in away, this shot represents 2 beginnings: the beginning of a stranger's lunch break, and the beginning of a personal effort to do more street photography.  I love capturing candid moments, and just taking life as it's happening.  We'll see how it goes :)

Canon EOS T3i
1/125 @ f/5.6, ISO 1600
55mm

First Challenge: Beginning

Good afternoon! So we have a few people interested. I love it, and I love you.

I'd like to start off with our first challenge. It's what you're here for, right? It's not a terribly imaginative concept:

beginning

Let's try a week for the first one. So let's see what you come up with by next Monday, the 3rd. Cool?

If you're still not really sure what you signed up for, take a picture with the above theme in mind. I don't really care whether you post one picture or ten. Spend the whole week setting up a complicated studio shot in your basement, go shoot that thing you always wanted to or just carry your camera with you throughout your day. If you can't do this one, don't sweat it. No pressure.

I don't care whether your picture is shot with your phone or a space telescope. I will really only impose one rule: anything you post here for a challenge needs to be shot after I post that challenge. The whole point here is to shoot something new, not drag out something you've already done...which was exactly what I started this blog off with. Give me a break. It was an example.

So go forth and take pictures. I mean, please. I'd really like to see what you do. Everybody in the list on the right has permission to post and reply on this blog, so when you shoot something just put it up here.

Thanks!

So, people are signing up. That's cool.

Of course, if you've come here you want to know what to do next. I'd like to set up a periodicalized photo challenge. It should be somewhere between daily and weekly. Challenges will have very simple descriptions. For instance, I shot this picture for a challenge with the title of 'Many.'

That's my grandmother's car, which my mom still has. My brother and I spent lots of time in that car as kids, with that view out the front. I remember the confines of that car (and what it was like to ride around in it with my grandparents) very well, but everything that would have happened outside of it is...a blur. Get it? Get it? See what I'm doing there? So clever.

So that's the kind of thing I expect to do with this blog. Give you a challenge, watch what you do with it, and hope everybody gets to take a piece home for themselves. It'll be a journey of enlightenment, courage and love. Seriously.

I'd like to get a few more contributors before we begin Please feel free to email me with suggestions for challenges. I have a few ideas, but my feeble brain will be tapped soon.

Welcome!

A bunch of us at Deep Silver Volition are into photography. A few of us thought it would be fun to make a blog in which to post the stuff we shoot. Maybe do some challenges. Share what we learn. Laugh and cry. Cool? Cool.