Abstract or Road Less Traveled

Finally this is the last set of challenge in DPC Olympics II. One is "B&W Abstract" and the other is "Road Less Traveled". For the abstract I had an idea right away. Funny, because when I took the photo, it was what I was feeling at the time. It's called "day Breaks".

Canon 5D, ISO 50, 4 sec, f/2.8, 51mm

Then today I was able to visit my favorite old abandoned farm, and tried for the other challenge. This one is called "Lucy Comes Home". No idea why Lucy and who this Lucy is, but it just got stuck in my head.

Canon 5D, ISO 50, 1/320 sec, f/4, 17mm

Now I have a dilemma on which challenge to enter. Any help would be appreciated. As always. :)

First model photo shoot

So a few days ago, I had my first model photo shoot. I was discussing the next DPC Olympics challenge with a good friend of mine from work, and he suggested that I could take photos of a old Chevy Coupe that my boss has. Why because it's purple and I mean as purple as they come. Then I suggested more as a joke that it would be nice to have a bikini clad girl with the car. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. He called his daughter and she agreed. I was a little surprised that this whole thing was so easy to arrange. Then it hit me. This is going to be an actual person, posing with the purple car. I got so nervous, I had trouble sleeping for two days before the scheduled photo shoot. Thinking all the time, about camera settings, backgrounds, poses, etc. The day came and all these ideas just plainly evaporated. I had no idea about anything, complete blank. Miss C. has changed that. She was absolutely amazing! She seemed relaxed, and knew what she was doing. Thus making me more relaxed and focused. We spent about an hour shooting different poses, and couple of different vehicles. Not only did I managed to get a shot for the "Purple" challenge, but also a few shots that I think came out not too bad, for a beginner. It was definitely a new learning experience, and a lot of fun too. I hope that Miss C. will be gracious enough in the future to grace these pages with her beauty again. Here are some of my favorite shots.

Canon 5D, ISO 200, f/5, 1/2500 sec, 25 mm

Canon 5D, ISO 200, f/5, 1/250 sec, 60 mm

Canon 5D, ISO 200, f/5, 1/320 sec, 60 mm

Canon 5D, ISO 200, f/4, 1/800 sec, 20 mm

Canon 5D, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/500 sec, 43 mm

The rest of the photos can be found on my flickr account.

DPC Olympics II update

Number 1 again. Our team just shines! Morning/Evening brought us again to the first spot for week 5, giving us another 10 points and widening the gap between us and the dreaded Icelanders even more. Yeah! Week 6 challenges are in voting now, and here is my entry: The Wood-a-Nator

Canon 5D, ISO 50, 117 sec, f/13, 59mm

A lot of work went into this shot. Gravel from my driveway, half a bottle of white sambuca, and a lot of patience. First set up the two "Woodies" on a piece of glass, then spread the gravel, and poured in the sambuca. Lighted the sambuca, which would not light for some reason. Just sporadic bursts of blue flame. So added some twigs to get the fire going. Once I had some sort of fire going, I turned off the lights, and opened the shutter. Using a little LED flash light I lighted the scene, slowly moving the light around "painting" the scene with light. Then I turned off the light, and using a red laser pointer I "painted" the red eyes of the "Wood-a-Nator". I think that was the most difficult part, because in complete darkness it's hard to aim the pointer directly at his face. It took a few tries, but I finally got the eyes. I also used the star effect filter, and if you look at his eyes they do have a "star" streaks on them. Unfortunately the voters are not liking it very much. It's not doing badly, but I thought it would be better.
Week 7 challenges have been announced and they are Purple/Door. I might some ideas for purple, but I won't say anything until it gets done.

DPC Olympics II updates

So week 3 and week 4 are behind us. We took second place in week 3, but week 4 was pretty dismal. Didn't score any points. I was a little surprised that my Lawn entry didn't do better, but then again it was a little risky photo. The good thing is we are still in the first place, closely followed by Icelanders and Aussies. Week 5 challenge of Morning/Evening is under vote right now. Week 6 challenges have been announced as well, and they are just silly. Here are previous challenges for Ducky, and Woody. I guess it's shopping time... again.

Lawn

The 3rd week challenge for the DPC Olympics is "Lawn" or "Still Life". Since I don't really like shooting inside, mostly because I do not have proper lighting equipment nor space, I decided to do "Lawn". The challenge details say: "Shoot a lawn and be creative". So I tried to be creative. I had a couple of interesting shots taken at a local park (good thing there were no people around), but either the backgrounds weren't good, or there was too much background (trees, power poles, power lines etc.) that the pictures came out too busy and took away from the idea. So I figured I'll try this idea at home. Got out my lawn mower, and spent the next couple of hours running around my back yard. Then set the tripod up with my 17-45mm wide angle lens on the deck, and asked my wife for help. So this is what I ended up with:

Canon 5D, ISO 100, 1/1600 sec, f/4, 31mm

2nd Week DPC Olympics II Results

So the 2nd week has passed and Team Polska is number 1 again. If you are interested in the results, then click here. There was some grumbling from other teams that the point system favors the wining team. Right now it's 10 pts for 1st place, 6pts for 2nd, 4 pts for 3rd, 3 pts for 4th, and 2 pts for 5th. Now people are complaining that there is too big of a difference between 1st place and the rest. Giving unfair advantage to the winners. All I can say is bloody losers. Last time there were no complains when Team Iceland was winning. It took only 2 challenges for our team to catch up and pass them. Yes they came back and eventually won, but no one complained about the point system. If a team only enters with 5 people, instead of all 8, well then they should not be whining about point system. That's my take on it.

Cold

Continuing in the spirit of drinks, I got some dry ice from a local reseller, and decided to play a little. It is the most wonderful stuff. Not only it will cool your drink in a mater of minutes, but it produces some really cool effects. Here are some shots I've done. Only one of them was done outside in the sun. I wanted to freeze the gas escaping from the glass. The other ones were done in my makeshift studio, in a fairly dark room, with a couple of candles and a little blue LED light. Thoughts?

Canon 5D, ISO 160, 1/1600 sec, f/2.8, 100mm

Canon 5D, ISO 160, 3.2 sec, f/7.1, 100mm

Canon 5D, ISO 800, 0.5 sec, f/7.1, 100mm

Devil's Brew

I had this idea for the next Olympic challenge of "Hot". Surprisingly I found it pretty hard to light up. I thought lighter fluid would work..... not a chance. So went back to the tried and true method of Sambuca. It flamed up really nicely. So what are your thoughts, on the "Devil's Brew"?.

Canon 5D, ISO 800, 0.5 sec, f/9, 70mm

Devil's Brew

I had this idea for the next Olympic challenge of "Hot". Surprisingly I found it pretty hard to light up. I thought lighter fluid would work..... not a chance. So went back to the tried and true method of Sambuca. It flamed up really nicely. So what are your thoughts, on the "Devil's Brew"?.

Canon 5D, ISO 800, 0.5 sec, f/9, 70mm

1st Week Olympic II Results

Wow. I must say that Team Polska did pretty good. 1st place, and 10 points! We even beat out the dreaded Icelanders and their killer landscapes. If you are interested in the results, then click here. On the other hand the second week is not going well for me. For some reason people are mistaking my jello, for a drink, and then saying that it was posted in the wrong challenge. Sheeeesh.

2nd Week of DP Challenge Olympics II

Well so it's time to submit another picture for the challenges Recipe (Food) or Recipe (Beverage). I tried at first with a Martini glass, and some olives.

Canon 5D, ISO 100, 1/4000 sec, f/2.8, 70mm

This alone took a lot of shots, since throwing olives at a small glass and hoping to hit the inside is not easy. I was missing a lot. In any case, after I got the critique from my team members, I tried reshooting. That did not go very well. Just wasted more time, and did not come up with anything decent. I then tried desserts. I know how to make some killer jello desserts. So after shooting, and reshooting for two evenings, I came up with this:

Canon 5D, ISO 400, 3.2 sec, f/6.3, 52mm

To get the light to go through the jello, I placed two candles at the back of the glass. One small candle was in a ribbed glass holder, giving this burst effect. Unfortunately I did not had the chance to eat it. I left it in the fridge overnight just in case I had to reshoot it. My two boys got to it first. Oh well, good for them.... I think.

Team Polska takes home the Silver!

We did it! We got the silver! Second place behind such a strong team as Icelanders, is a pretty good achievement if I can say so. Third place was taken by team Tropical Islands, pushing the Germans into the fourth spot. To tell the truth, I'm glad it's over. It's pretty stressful to come up with new ideas every week, and try to execute them well. Since all these challenges were done with Basic Editing rules, the whole setup had to be done perfectly. No editing in photoshop besides playing with colors, saturation, levels etc. No special filters, no spot editing. So this made it even harder. Great experience though, and made new friends, which as with all internet friends, they are all over the place. The closest one is about 1300km away. That's it for the Olympics.... maybe sometime in July there will be another one.... we will see.

Last week of the Olympics.

This week is the last week of the DPC Olympics. The challenges were, The Paranormal and Negative Image. Immediately I had an idea for the paranormal challenge and after a few tweaks here and there. I submitted the following photo:

I'm very grateful to my wife for sitting in, and having enough patience to sit through the whole process. There were a few of these, and each took about 15s of sitting absolutely still. Unfortunately it's not doing very well in terms of points. About average I would say. I also had to submit a proof of it, and the steps necessary to achieve this effect. I guess someone did not believe that all you have to do, is turn off all the saturation colors except for the blue. What are your thoughts on the photo?

Week 7 Results

Team Polska had a very strong week. This was the highest average score during the whole of the Olympics, but to our surprise, the German team beat us to the second place. Who got the first place this week? Who do you think.. hmmm? The Icelanders of course. So we took the 3rd spot. We are still holding on to the 2nd place in overall standings, but the Icelanders are moving away, and the Germans are closing in. Here are our results from Week 7:
Centered Composition
MAK - La Pomme
Bruski - Pride
Artvet - Gerbera

Homemade Landscape
Dudski - The "Eat Your Greens" Mountain Retreat
Budya - Sim City 5000
cptpoland - Icebergs basking in the moon light.
AP - BRRRRRRRrrrrr!!!!!!

Wooohooo Team Polska number 1 for week 6!!

Absolutely amazing results from the Polish team for week 6 of DPChallenge Olympics. Got another 10 points under our belt, which puts us in the second place overall, just 4 points behind Icelanders!
Here are our entries for Warm Colors:
Bruski - Cala Lillies
Budya - Fuzzzzzy
AP - Tropicália
Cool Color entries:
MAK - The Weeping Willow
Dudski - A Far Away Place
Artvet - Blue
CptPoland - A Rose in Blue

Week 7 Submission

Thank you everyone for great comments. I have tried to redo the Iceberg shots. Give them more life, but for some reason could not repeat it. Here are the remixes of Iceberg shots:

Don't know if it's the composition or the light. I mean they do look ok, but not for a submission. At least I don't think so.
Going through the original pictures I found one I must have missed initially. Did some quick editing, and here it is:

One regret I have is that I didn't shoot it with a higher aperture. I had it set for 5.6, and really should have had it at 16 or even higher. This would have probably made the two little icebergs sharper. Overall these pictures were challenging in themselves. Lots of flour, about 1.5kg of it. Good thing none of it went to waste.

I took, some plastic containers, packed them tight with flour, and made little forms on a mirror. Then came shaping cracking of the molds to make them appear a little more authentic. Then used a normal desk lamp, but changed the lightbulb to a blue one. The light on the "sky" is a little LED light on a dark blue velvet. I wish I could have added more things to the picture like little stars of sorts, but it is what it is. Hopefully it won't be a major disappointment.

Week 5 Entry for DPC Olympics

I'm really surprised. This is my entry for the Intimacy challenge.

It's not doing as well as I hoped it would. Actually right now it's doing a lot worse. It's not even at 5 average. There is a couple of consolations.... there is still a week of voting to go, and so far the comments have been pretty positive. We will see how it goes....

Week 4 Olympic Results

So we are half way through and Team Polska is going strong. We took another 2nd place this week. Overall we are still 2nd, only the Icelanders are in our way. I must admit they do have a strong team, and will not be easy to catch. Here are our results:
Environmental Portrait
MAK - Frankie. Painter & Decorator
Dudski - Underground Musician
Artvet - The Scientist
AP - Night Shift Driver
Fences
Bruski - Into The Distance
Budya - Interlinked
CptPoland - Barred from Fun
My shot wasn't very good, and it showed. Didn't have much time for the challenge, so during the trip to Vegas snapped a couple of fences with my little point and shoot camera. That one was the best of them.
Week 5 challenges were Intimacy and Pattern. The votes have started..... and I know there is a whole week to go, but I'm really disappointed and pissed off! So far it's doing worse than the Fence...

Week 3 Olympic Results

Last challenges, Blurry Mess and Pollution, were brutal to our team. We didn't get any points, which meant that we dropped to second place in overall standings. Blurry Mess was especially hard. Here are the results of week number 3:
Blurry Mess
Budya - Purple Pandemonium
Bruski - Ancient Medicine
Dudski - Dreams Ablaze
Artvet - Repressed Desires
MAK - Light-On-Light
Pollution
AP - Metropolis Emissions
CptPoland - The Future?
Personally I was disappointed that my picture did so poorly. Oh well. Complete current standings can be found here.
This week (week 4) is almost coming to an end, and I must say that we have very very good scores so far. I will post the results once the voting is over on Tuesday.

Results for week 2 - Poland is numero uno!

Well well well. Team Polska got the highest score this week! Currently we are tied for the first place with Iceland. This is very very cool. Good thing that only 4 highest marked pictures count towards the final score, or we would not score so high. Here are links to the team photos.
Tilted Challenge:
Ten past five - Mak
Speeding Away - Bruski
Vanishing Point - CptPoland

Silverware Challenge:
Witch's Brew - Budya
Family Portrait - Artvet
fORkGY ? - AP Lucifer's Fork - Dudski