At the beginning of January, I started a new 52 week photo challenge (#dogwood2017) and the first week’s assignment was rule of thirds. Although the rule of thirds is a compositional thing, I had a very definite idea of what I wanted to do.

A couple of years ago, on Queen Street West, I made a photo of a young woman experiencing “good” pain while getting a tattoo. Her looks and gesture reminds me so much of my youngest daughter, that this is one of my all time favourite shots. Anyway, getting back to the topic, I was hoping to re-create something like that for week 1, so I visited a local tattoo shop in Port Credit. I had a very nice and quite lengthy conversation with this guy in the shop just before I made his portrait. (at top of page). He looked quite rough, but very friendly in a Tim Horton’s kind of way.

A few days later, I dropped in to leave a couple of prints with the owner. I asked him about the portrait guy, and he informed me that he just got out of prison. — gulp! This tattoo parlor is kind of a biker, bluesy place, and I noticed they were playing an old Bo Didley song “You Can’t Judge a Book By Lookin’ At The Cover”.

Week 1 candidate

Girl getting tattoo

This year’s challenge is broken down to 3 categories – Story-telling, Technical (mix of in-camera and post-processing) and Artistic Impression. It’s so much more difficult than last year’s project that I had to quit my part-time job.

[Click any photo for slideshow]

Week 1 Story: Rule of Thirds

Week 1 Story: Rule of Thirds

This was the final shot I used for the challenge. At the Starbucks in Long Branch, this woman looked like she was really deep in thought.

Week 2 Technical: Straight Out Of The Camera (SOOC)

Week 2 Technical: Straight Out Of The Camera (SOOC)

This week was problematic, and the weather wasn’t helping. I got this photo on Toronto Island in the pouring rain. No post-processing done here, but in week 50, this photo will be processed and re-submitted. Hopefully I can make it more interesting then 🙁

Week 3 Artistic: Land

Week 3 Artistic: Land

I’ve been playing around with different camera techniques and one of them, which I used here, is ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). Yes, your eyes are ok. 😉

Week 4 Story: Mirror

Week 4 Story: Mirror

Had a lot of fun with this one – getting Sydney to sit still for a few minutes was a breeze (especially in her hair). She’s a great model, and I hope to use her more. I’ve been learning about composite images in Photoshop, which I used here.

Week 5 Technical: Ten Shots

Week 5 Technical: Ten Shots

I had trouble finding an interesting subject for this challenge, where each shot had to be a different angle, distance or focal length and then pick one to share. This is the artistic steel fence on Front Street close to the Distillery District. The building behind the fence is now a school, but was the site of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, escaped slaves, who established the Toronto Terminus of the Underground Railroad.

Week 6 Artistic: Candy

Week 6 Artistic: Candy

Not allowed to use real candy for this challenge, so I made photographer’s eye candy.

Week 7 Story: Forgotten

Week 7 Story: Forgotten

I walked from Union Station to Yonge/Dundas Square looking for a forgotten, homeless person. The intention was to get people walking by in a blurr. The young woman under this pile of sleeping bags didn’t even know I made a photo, but I gave her a toonie anyway. She really deserved it for this shot on a very cold day.

Week 8 Technical: One Shot

Week 8 Technical: One Shot

Imagine that it is the last shot on a roll of film, and you have one chance to “nail” it. Well, when the fog rolled in at Port Credit, I just got down to the trail at the point, and waited. Then she came along.

Week 9 Artistic: Still Life

Week 9 Artistic: Still Life

No, a couple of pieces of fruit on the table won’t do it for this advanced challenge. I had quite an audience at Starbucks setting up for this shot. I don’t usually use captions, but this photograph is “The Tools and Rewards of a Street Photographer”. The notebook is my photo sketchbook for this year, which I’m filling with notes and prints of the challenge.

Week 10 Story Perspective

Week 10 Story: Perspective

Perspective is the relationship of objects in the scene. I had some problems understanding the difference between perspective and “leading lines”, but learned that a leading lines photo is a category of perspective where the lines lead to the main subject. In a simple perspective photo, the lines lead to a vanishing jpoint. Am I back in college here, or what?

When I was at this rink, at the Beaches, there was another photographer doing headshots of a group of skaters. When I put my camera right on the ice with a 3 inch tripod to get this shot, I caused a lot of head (and helmet) scratching.

Week 10 candidate – Perspective

Week 10 candidate – Perspective

[Click any photo for slideshow]