September Challenges

Hello world!

We have Challenges! A monthly schedule if you will, that allows you to play along and be published on our blog! Both of us are really looking forward to seeing what each other and you can do! Our challenges will take place every 7 days except for the monthly one which you will the entire, well almost the entire, month to complete!  A little bit of slow start here as the first challenge is due on the 7th! You can submit your photos at writtenshots@gmail.com

The rules are quite simple. Every week we will have a challenge that will fall into 3 categories with a monthly challenge due the last week. Since these are weekly challenges you wont know the “theme or subject” of the challenge until the week before. These challenges will fall on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of every month. So if you want to know the challenge of the week refer to the previous posting on those dates!

Rules:

1. Must fit the theme/subject

2. No Nudity

3. We realize that we may be busy, life happens and sometimes things just don’t work out so you may use a photo you have taken before as long as it falls into the theme or subject AND IT IS NOT MORE THAN A YEAR OLD!

4. The photo may be from any device, be it camera or phone or whatever.

Those are the only rules. Editing and so on is up to you!

We will give credit and Link back to you if you send the info!!

The first week will always be a “Same Object Challenge” in which we showcase how the same thing can be seen differently or differently seen.

The second week will always be a “1000 word Challenge” of a photo shown on the 7th. A picture is worth a 1000 words right?

The third week will always be a “Living Thing Challenge” this challenge does exclude plants, coral and such. We like the challenge of catching something thats moving.

Finally due on the 28th of every month will be the monthly challenge photo! You have a month to work on this so make it count!

We are unfortunately a little behind this month so there is only a few days left to complete the Same Object Challenge!!

Even though Kate currently resides in America she is coming to Japan soon so our blog is set to Tokyo time! Which means for all of you on the other side of the world that we may be ahead of or behind you in time. So that only gives some of you a few days at most to complete our first challenge!

Due on the 7th is a photo of your own handwriting. 

For the month of September, can I have a drum roll please…….. The challenge is “Night Shots”!

Collab Post: Hack My Photo! #1

Alright, dear readers, Kate here.  Today’s a special day for all of you!  Today, Anne and I have teamed up for a post!  It’s a new thing we’ll be repeating a lot as we get this whole “post a blog post” thing under our belts.  Today’s collaboration is called Hack My Photo! and here are the rules:

1. You choose a photo for your partner in crime to edit.
2. This photo cannot be more than a year old.
3. You have a set time limit to edit the photo you are given.  Our time limit is 30 minutes.

And that’s it.  Pretty easy.  Except when you’re editing a photo you didn’t take.

Here’s the original photo Anne sent to me unedited, followed by the original unedited photo I sent to her.

Anne’s original photo.

Kate’s original photo.

We’ll start with my edits because I’m the one typing this up.  When editing photos, I don’t usually even think to crop them.  This is because my shooting style is to zoom in/out to get the shot I want or move around until it’s framed the way I want it without me having to crop it in post.  So then, my first thought with the photo I was given was to bring out some sunlight and brighten the sky up a bit since it looks like it was a dreary day the day this photo was taken.  I did all of that in Camera Raw by adjusting the exposure and brightness and such.  I fiddled with specific colors’ saturation levels to try to get the sky even the tiniest bit more blue, but couldn’t make it work.  So I took the photo into Photoshop.  My go-to edit is Linear Contrast, so I slapped that on before doing anything else.  I love the way it looks.  From there, I did some more hue altering and brought out the blue in the sky by using the magic wand to select the sky area, making a new layer, adjusting the hue and saturation, and then changing that layer’s opacity to make it look more natural and less obviously edited.  I also did something similar to get the dark colors darker – I copied the original layer in Photoshop and layered it on with Darken and adjusted the opacity until I had it where I like it.  I tend to like darker photos with heavier contrast, and that’s what I ended up doing with this one.

Edited only in Camera Raw by Kate.

Continued edits in Photoshop by Kate.

 

Anne’s edit of her own photo.

And now, here’s Anne’s bit, as written by her:

When I first saw this photo I loved the colors, the purple, yellow, white and bright spring green. So I opened it and got into editing it. However, because I am OCD or ADHD or whatever other acronym you want to throw in there my eye kept being drawn to the brown curly leaf(?) behind the iris. So I thought okay I will take this into PS and be done with it… I forgot about the fuzzy yellow stuff! So to cut a long story short it was just too much work in the 30 min time limit we gave ourselves. I liked the daisies on the right side and so I just went with them. For the first edit after doing a screen layer and a multiply layer and flattening them both in-between I went into the lens distort filter and added a small vignette and then a small bowing of the lens to give it a miniscule fisheye effect but in reality to bring the front flower and stem closer. The second part I didn’t crop as close as I wanted more of the vignette and more of the colors. I love the hint of pink in it. For the last one I cropped it closer but I’m not sure if I am happy with the results as you can see grain/noise in the photo. If I had more time I would probably go back in there with my pen and get all the fuzzy yellow stuff and use the picture as a whole but my (acronym here) wouldn’t let me.

 

Anne’s first edit.

Anne’s second edit.

Anne’s third edit.

Kate’s edit of her own photo.

 

Kate here again to send you off, dear readers.  What do you think?  Do you think our editing styles are similar?  Would you have edited either photo differently?  Let us know in the comments!  We’d love to hear from you, our lovely readers!

Get out there and shoot!

Kate & Anne