Not sure what I think about this challenge. But it was an interesting discovery process.
My first thought was to go down to the tourist part of town (there really isn't much of a town otherwise. That's where you find people). And to find people and stories. When I think of "interesting" photographs, I think of ones with stories.
I rode my bike around looking for something. And I discovered: people really don't interest me. I really didn't want to be doing it. I spent a lot of time looking at baby animals and then gave up.
Since I was out and about, I went to check out an osprey nest that had been active the previous year. I knew it wouldn't be anything for the ubique challenge, but it was what interested me.
Then I discovered, people go for what interests them. I still have simple tastes. I enjoy nature. I'm fascinated by it. I can and have sat for hours watching osprey. I love butterflies. I love sunsets (I don't like taking pictures of sunsets, but I still will call my family out to come and look when there's a wonderful one.)
Yet these things are a dime a dozen in photographs.
This actually wasn't what I wanted to enter. What I wanted to enter was much more simplistic, but had more of a story, imo. I have an outtake in another challenge, so I can't post it now. But I knew it would get slammed.
When I was watching the osprey, there was an egret wandering around. I did love his shadow, so I was hoping something interesting would come of it. It's not what I wanted. And actually this seems contrived to me. I'm surprised at the score and the sheer number of comments and the gallery hanging. I'm please. But surprised. Because it seems forced and there's not really a story to it.
In going through and voting on the challenge, I realized how much my tastes have changed since I've been here. And I realized that for all of my desires to be more interesting, more edgy, more artsy, it's only going to happen when forced. Because I'll still look to what I love. The main hope is perhaps I'll see it in more than one way.
Thanks for the comments. This has been a very interesting experiment.
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just the right amount of blur and noise and cropping to achieve ... unity between reality and dream. This is not done, as some think, merely by making a mess. It actually requires a careful balance. Showing too much shadow and reflection ruins the effect. It's like lucid dreaming... you know you're in the dream, so you're not worried. This photo keeps you in the dream and doesn't let you know it's a dream.
A wonderful image. The perfectly positioned and delineated legs get the show rolling. The incredible shadow of the bird itself, cast on uneven ground, shimmers in ragged, mirage-like fashion. The bill alone is a revelation. The interplay between a truncated reality and a coyly offered phantasmagoria shatters complacency, or at least the rut of "knowing". The almost glaring backdrop to the shadow, consisting of water, sand or soil and upper legs, elicits a squint of presence. I see in this image the unsteady birth of hieroglyphics. One of four personal favorites.
Yep, if there's one thing I love about photography it's photographs where a good part of the picture is outside the frame. If it's all inside the frame, it's too easy to say, "Oh yes, I know that (bird/situation/scene/whatever)." But here we are obliged to give it a good shake of the curiosity and imagination, and that's always a good thing. Always! The picture is no longer just yours; it's become ours. Yours and mine. Yours and any viewer's. Thank you.
when I think of echoes in photography, I usually think about two unrelated objects resembling each other. Here however one is just a shadow of another, so echo is not surprising. Still, nice framing.
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