Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #192 – Rule of Thirds

It’s Saturday and therefore it’s time for The Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge. It’s Tina’s turn to challenge us this week. And it’s again a quite technical challenge. She calls for images demonstrating the “Rule of Thirds”.

To understand, what “Rule of Thirds” means, think of 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines parting your image into 9 equal-sized rectangles. The most important part of the image should be places on one of the 4 points, where a horizontal and a vertical lines are crossing each other. In the screenshot below of an unedited image, I switched on showing these lines. Some cameras are even able to show these lines either in your view-finder or on the big display. Even many smartphones have the ability to help you get more interesting images by overlaying these lines while taking your images.

You don’t need to have your main subject exactly on one of these points. It’s not always possible. But, it gives you a valuable hint for getting better images. And, it’s so easy to incorporate.

Below, you can find some more examples from my archive from different genres.

 

Don’t get me wrong, following this rule is not a force. It’s a good rule, even many of the old and now-famous painters followed them. But, there are some cases, where it is necessary to break the rule. But, that’s for another post 🙂

My advice for a beginner: stay with the rules until it becomes natural for you, to see the world that way. Then begin to experiment by breaking the rule intentionally and knowing the exact reason why it is necessary to break them in a certain image to reach the next level of photography.

Take care!

spring

More of my images can be seen on my own blog.

spring

Throwback Thursday: Rewarded!

I assume, most of us like sleeping a bit longer on weekends or public holidays. Me, too. But, sometimes certain ideas require something else.

The week before Easter, I got a hint about a special occasion on Holy Saturday morning in Cologne. Cologne is not that far away, only a nearly 1-hour drive. So, I set my alarm clock for 4:00 a.m. When it rang, I got up and checked the sky if stars were visible. They were. So, starting the coffee maker was the next step before heading to the shower. Less than half an hour later, I sat in the car heading to Cologne.

Unfortunately, there were a few fleecy clouds between me and my target. Nevertheless, the results are quite satisfying, except for the black sky. Approximately 20-30 minutes later, the sky would have been perfect.

I gave it a second try on Easter Sunday morning, but now, the moon went down in a different position, so the composition wasn’t possible anymore. According to the source of the hint, this image is possible only once a year. So, Easter Sunday was already too late. The last image is taken on Easter Sunday morning, the others are from Holy Saturday.

Take care

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: angry cat

 

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Travel Tuesday: Loch Harport and the Cuillins

Gesto Bay viewpoint

What a wonderful sight to the Cuillins. They were covered so nicely with their blanket of clouds and the sheep make a wonderful foreground.

Take care!

 

Monochrome Monday 8-50

 

Take care!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge 196: “Humor”

This time John challenges us for The Lens-Artists Photo Challenge with Humor 😲 He writes, that he picked this theme because he was considered of having a very special kind of humor. Phew!

How can I picture “humor”? What kind of humor do I have? My wife sometimes states that it seems from her point of view, I’d have to go to the cellar for laughing. I guess, she’s wrong. But, I have to admit, I love intelligent humor and when you have to look around the corner for being able to understand it.

From my point of view, it seems to be impossible to show “humor”. Instead, I picked a few humorous or funny images from my archive for you.

This is quite common in some areas in the countryside to make public that someone on the farm is about to marry soon.

 

We found this open-air shower and washbowl in the high-temperature area of northeast Iceland. Water was running unstoppable. While we were wondering about it and taking a couple of images, a second car arrived at this completely free parking ground. A couple from Slovenia left the car and came up to us. They were also wondering about it. After a short talk, the man decided, that taking here a shower would be a great opportunity because the camping ground where they stayed the night wasn’t that great, and visiting a public bath would be quite expensive.

 

 

This next image was taken during the parade for the annual funfair of our town. It celebrates the idea of Jamaica having its first bob team for running during the Olympic Winter Games. There’s also a movie telling this remarkable story called “Cool Runnings”. The scene below shows the finish of the racing track.

I photographed this funny lady a couple of years ago, also during the funfair parade.

This is a harpy, a fictional character in an anime or manga. I’m not that familiar whit that kind of art, but I love photographing cosplayers during the annual Japantag in our state capitol every now and then.

I love street art and this huge one is painted on the side of a 3- or 4-floor apartment building. Enlarge it, it has funny details, too.

This is also street art: a war-knitter decorated some poles and street-bordering chains.

I stumbled upon these “babies” in Prague a couple of years ago. No idea, what the artist has in his mind while creating them.

This is also in the town where I live. Two times a year the laundry is put up in the old town: in June during the Old-Town-Festival and in September for the funfair. A few years ago this image found its way into our State Archive as it documents a certain folkloristic habit.

 

This final image is taken during our annual carnival escape. It’s one of the fish dealers in the Barcelona Market hall

Enough fun for a day,

Take care!

Earth Day

Earth Day is meant to celebrate the beauty and wealth of our planet. Over the millennia, nature created so many species, fauna and flora. All of them…

Earth Day

Throwback Thursday: Club Tropicana and LAPC 195 “colorful expressions”

 

Today I have another image taken in Club Tropicana in Havana for you.

I’m not interested in dancing at all. So, I wasn’t very eager to go, when I saw this topic on the agenda. But, I also didn’t want to stay alone at the hotel and the visit was already prepaid in the package. Thus, I went.

I have to admit, it was a great experience. I’m happy about the good quality of my images because it was very dark. All of my images are taken at ISO 6400 😲😳 to have short shutter speeds with a suitable field of depth and avoid motion blur.

I guess I’m going to show you a couple of more images taken during that night in the near future. Stay tuned.

In case, you want to see more from Cuba, click here.

Because of the colorful dresses of the ladies, this image is also a perfect fit for LAPC. It’s hosted by Anne, this week.

Take care!

 

Wordless Wednesday: beauty without a beast

Take care!

Travel Tuesday: Another view back to the Old man of Storr

A final look back to the Old man of Storr. When looking at the clouds, I guess, we were back just in time before a severe storm started.

 

Take care!

 

Monochrome Monday 8-49

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It’s sometimes hard to find images fitting to a certain challenge. For these tasks, I’m using the help of Excire Foto. I told the software where my image library is located and it starts analyzing the images. It recognizes the main colors in the images as well as the contents (what is in the images) and tags them automatically. Later, I can use the user interface to search for images with certain tags. Currently, you can save a few bucks when ordering Excire Foto, because it’s on sale. With coupon code Eggcire22, valid until 18.04.2022, you can save 22%.

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Take care!

Happy Easter!

In Bavaria

More of my images can be seen on my own blog.

In Bavaria

Throwback Thursday: Club Tropicana

 

Today I have another image taken in Club Tropicana in Havana for you.

I’m not interested in dancing at all. So, I wasn’t very eager to go, when I saw this topic on the agenda. But, I also didn’t want to stay alone at the hotel and the visit was already prepaid in the package. Thus, I went.

I have to admit, it was a great experience. I’m happy about the good quality of my images because it was very dark. All of my images are taken at ISO 6400 😲😳.

I guess I’m going to show you a couple of more images taken during that night in the near future. Stay tuned.

In case, you want to see more from Cuba, click here.

Take care

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: white stars in the forest

wood anemone (Anemonoides nemorosa / syn. Anemone nemorosa) / Buschwindröschen

Take care!

Travel Tuesday: A view back to the Old man of Storr and his family

 

Back at the street a final view back to the Old man of Storr and his family with an 85mm focal length. They are standing or sitting up there and enjoying the view down to the sea. The bright spots are some sheep. You can enlarge the image by clicking on it. Do you see the paths? No? Me, neither. As I already told you, there aren’t any.

The group is located approximately 450m above the sea and the name giving “Old man” is about 48m high. The Storr is the name of the whole mountain formation (750 m high), where the rock needles grew out (they were created by the rain while the surrounding material eroded and only the harder parts survived). They have a fantastic view downhill to the sea, the neighboring islands, and even the Scottish mainland (assumed the sight is good enough). I already showed it to you in my past posts

From the parking ground, you can follow a gravel path for a few hundred meters ending at a gate. Up to here, the path is steep but quite easy to walk. Behind the gate, the harder part of the way up starts. Following sheep trails, we climbed uphill. But, the ground was very soft and slippy because of the amount of rain.

I’m very happy to have been able to climb up and come back down safely. In case, you want to try it, don’t try it without very solid hiking boots. In addition, hiking poles could be very useful. I didn’t have had hiking poles but missed them.

Take care!

 

Monochrome Monday 8-48

 

 

I took this image on Saturday before last. It’s already early April, and just like the old farmer’s rule says, April does whatever she wants. Just like last April, we got snow in die mid of spring. But, fortunately, this time most of the fruit trees didn’t have their blossoms so early. Over the last weeks, the weather was very nice and sunny, but cold. But, the magnolias (tulip trees) were affected again. It started snowing Friday at noon and until nightfall, we had a quite solid snow cover on the ground. Saturday morning, I had approximately 15 cm of snow on my car. Although the snow was nearly completely gone by Saturday noon, nearly all petals of the magnolia blossoms were already on the ground. What a pity. The already short period of magnolia blooming time was cut even earlier.

The tree in my image is a white-pink blooming magnolia tree all covered by snow.

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It’s sometimes hard to find images fitting to a certain challenge. For these tasks, I’m using the help of Excire Foto. I told the software where my image library is located and it starts analyzing the images. It recognizes the main colors in the images as well as the contents (what is in the images) and tags them automatically. Later, I can use the user interface to search for images with certain tags. Currently, you can save a few bucks when ordering Excire Foto, because it’s on sale. With coupon code Eggcire22, valid until 18.04.2022, you can save 22%.

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Take care!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge 194: “bokeh”

Today, Sofia Alves asks for something called “bokeh”. This word is derived from Japanese. Wikipedia describes it as follows:

“In photography, bokeh (/ˈboʊkə/ BOH-kə or /ˈboʊkeɪ/ BOH-kay; Japanese: [boke]) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image. Bokeh has also been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”. Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause very different bokeh effects. Some lens designs blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce distracting or unpleasant blurring (“good” and “bad” bokeh, respectively). Photographers may deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions, accentuating their lens’s bokeh.

Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it is often associated with such areas.[6] However, bokeh is not limited to highlights; blur occurs in all regions of an image which are outside the depth of field.”

Next, I have a few examples from my archive.

 

Take care!

 

rough sea

More of my images can be seen on my own blog.

rough sea

Throwback Thursday and Lens-Artists Photo Challenge 193: “birthday”

This week, John Steiner is looking forward to celebrating his birthday, so I’m happy to join the LAPC party. In some families and in some cultures, birthdays are a reason for huge celebrations. So, I picked up this post published first back in 2013.

There is a certain habit in Cuba of celebrating a girl’s 15th birthday.

The girl gets special clothing, is dressed up, and gets perfect makeup. Then they go to a photographer to take beautiful photographs.

According to our guide, some girls are dressed like a bride for these sessions, others wear cocktail dresses and I also noticed photographs showing a girl dressed like a female version of an old-fashioned, Spanish caballero. The photographs are usually taken in a park or in the streets and not in a studio.

Two weeks later, the parents and the girl have a party with all of her friends, and an album, containing the photos, which is a real eyecatcher for that party. Also, the parents put framed photos from that session on their walls.

I like that idea. (OK, maybe, because I’m a photographer).

We met this young lady in the old town of Havana. Her mother was with her and took care of her hairstyle and her makeup, while the photographer directed his assistant to adjust the reflector.

So, we can congratulate her on her 15th birthday.

Are there any similar habits, where you live or coming from?

While waiting for my next post you can have a look at the previous posts and maybe drop me a note in the comments section below.

 

In the meantime, the girl is a young woman. As I said, I took these photos back in 2013. So, she’s already 24. How much must have changed for her in her life.

As I’m always interested in getting to know habits from other countries, regions, or cultures, drop me a note in the comments and tell me, how do you celebrate birthdays. I’m interested in your personal celebration as well as in general habits and traditions.

Take care!

Wordless Wednesday: Hanami

Take care!

Travel Tuesday: Old man of Storr

 

 

Climbing up a steep hill has not only disadvantages. One benefit is, that you have (or at least can have) a very good sight. For this image, I turned my camera a little more to the left. Thus, The Old man of Storr isn’t in the image like it was in my image last week also taken from this point. But, you can recognize the lake and the sea way better.

Take care!

 

Monochrome Monday 8-47

I took this image two weeks ago. The trees were still without any leaves. So, the sunlight was able to reach the ground and paint interesting patterns on the ground. You can enlarge it, when clicking on the image, as usual.

 

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It’s sometimes hard to find images fitting to a certain challenge. For these tasks, I’m using the help of Excire Foto. I told the software where my image library is located and it starts analyzing the images. It recognizes the main colors in the images as well as the contents (what is in the images) and tags them automatically. Later, I can use the user interface to search for images with certain tags. Currently, you can save a few bucks when ordering Excire Foto, because it’s on sale. With coupon Code SPRING-30 you can save 30%.

When using this link, new customers can get Excire Analytics for free when buying Excire Foto before March, 31st. After clicking the link, put both products (Excire Analytics is visible in a separate tab after clicking on Excire Foto for seeing the details) in your shopping cart and use code AnalyticsDeal during checkout and the total decreases by 39€.

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Take care!

number 8

More of my images can be seen on my own blog.

number 8