Walker Evans said "Color photography is vulgar." I start a new experiment to shoot the fall color of the Smoky Mountains National park entirely in black and white.
So, after sifting through the hundreds of entries—well, nine, actually—we've decided upon the winners of the "Reflections" contest. <insert virtual drumroll here...>
The winner of Eli Reinholdtsen's book "Folk" and a signed print from me is Chris Ward, for his image "Space Needle Reflected."
Eli had this to say about Chris' image:
"This image makes me really curious. I am trying to figure out what is happening but I just can’t understand enough of it. Is it a train to the right perhaps? This is a great scene and I would have worked it a lot. Perhaps you could add a person to give it a stronger sense of scale. Or maybe a contrast colored balloon on the way up?"
Chris, I really like this. It crosses that line into the abstract well and, like Eli says, it makes me curious about what's really going on. Great job!
The second place winner of a copy of Eli's book, "Folk," is Barry Yanowitz, with his image "Reflecting on Coney Island."
Eli says:
"I like how you have captured the passing car twice – both in the rear window and on the street itself. This is often difficult to pull off with a good background but I think you have managed here. The orange works really well with the blue. Compositionally, I was thinking perhaps to crop a bit on the right since the sky takes up almost half of the frame, but in the end I decided against it, as the sky is really beautiful."
Finally, the third place winner of a signed print from me is Sabrina Henry (also known as the Chronicles of Learning Photography) for her image, "Main Street #1."
Eli's comments:
"Ooooh! My kind of place! I like how the trees blend in with the tapestry. I would have cropped a bit tighter on the left to get rid of the frame so the light shines more on the mannequins. I would consider coming back a bit earlier in the day so that the sun would shine 90 degrees down the street and perhaps in the face of someone passing by. Maybe another woman in white? Even with a hat? Or a man complementing the ladies?"
Congratulations to all of the winners! Please send your postal mailing information to info@thelightwithout.com and I'll get your books and prints out shortly. If you won a print of mine, be sure to let me know which one you'd like from the Hip Sips set, which you can find HERE. Let me know the title you want, and I'll print and sign it, and send it your way.
My thanks also to everyone who took the time to enter the contest. I really appreciate your participation and I hope you've gotten some ideas about how you can use reflections in your photography. In the next few days, I'll be posting Eli's comments on each of your photos on Flickr, since she was kind enough to share them for everyone.
Of course my thanks to Eli Reinholdtsen as well, both for her participation as a judge and for her inspirational photography. Even if you didn't win it, consider buying her book on Blurb. It's filled with her work in reflections and I think they will inspire you.
Thanks again to everyone! Have a great holiday!
It's interesting how people learn differently. Some say they're visual learners; they want to be shown what to do through images, video, etc. Others say they learn better through words, both written and spoken. Some people learn better in groups; others, by themselves. Personally, I think that we all learn a little bit by all of these methods. I can watch someone do something and learn how to do it, as well as read a manual to perform the same task. I learn when I'm by myself, and I learn with a group of others seeking similar knowledge.
My experience in Italy Within the Frame with David duChemin and Jeffrey Chapman bears this out, at least for me. A typical day for us started with some breakfast conversation about what we shot the day before and what we were going to shoot today. We would then go out for the first part of the day's shooting, sometimes as a group and sometimes on our own. We'd meet up again for lunch and talk of the morning's images, then head out again for a few more hours. There were late afternoon image critiques in which we all participated—either giving or taking criticism—and more shooting before dinner, again either together or alone. On occasion, a few of us would hang out after dinner, reviewing the images of the day on our laptops and talking about some of our favorites. Most of the days followed this pattern, mixing up the amount of interaction or solitude as we wanted.
Personally, I thrive in this kind of situation. I enjoy learning together—talking about a specific shot I was after, picking David's and Jeffrey's brains about an angle or a look, and generally working together to share our knowledge and gain more. However, I also need time to absorb the new information and thinking from these discussions and to figure out how to apply the lessons to my own photography. As a result, I would sometimes head out by myself to play with the stuff I'd learned and see what worked for me. Being alone, I could concentrate on practicing my craft, sifting through all I'd seen and heard previously to find those nuggets that would make me a better photographer.
It certainly helped that David and Jeffrey purposely kept the workshop group small; eight participants in all. This intimacy helped us not only to get good chunks of their time, but kept it easy for us to interact as a group. Too many more people and we would have probably fragmented into smaller groups. In addition, David's and Jeffrey's teaching styles allowed us to explore things on our own, but they were nearly always available to us when we had questions, or if we just wanted to talk about something—photography, wine, pasta, life in general. This type of organic teaching style can be a little daunting if you're not used to seeking out your instructor(s) and asking pointed questions. I did come back with a few unanswered questions, but only because I didn't ask them.
Italy Within the Frame was such a good learning experience for me—both personally and photographically— that I'm making plans to spend more time with David and Jeffrey.