Anything. It's a big word. You can be anything. You can do anything. And for this week's Shooting Challenge, you could photograph anything. Here are the 36 shots that showcase your complete creative potential.
WINNER: Eureka!
Around last week the idea sort of popped in my mind to take clean, stylized pictures of lighbulbs and filaments. I'm probably not the first one to come up with this but what the heck, I thought it'd be fund. Since incandescent bulbs are now banned in France I had to order a few with interesting filaments from a specialized shop. I actually have 7 different bulbs in this series but this one's my favourite - I just like the overall balance.
I shot it with my Fuji X-E1 and kit 18-55 zoom at 55 mm, f/22, ISO 200. The image is a combination of two shots: one with the bulb on, a 9-stop ND filter, and 4-second exposure (the filament), and another with the bulb off, no filter and also 4-second exposure (the glass). I probably could have done it in one shot if I had a variator to have the bulb running at low power. The main challenge was to find two appropriately-placed vertical light sources for the side highlights; in the end I took the shot in my parents' kitchen - I was visiting - at night, with the garage and living room doors ajar. Whatever works! Anyway. I think it turned out OK.
- Wealon Bouillet
Decay
This photo was taken with a Fujifilm x100, ISO 1000, F 10, 1/250 in Huntington WV, and I think that it captures the slow decay and religious fatalism that is rampant in this town. As far as editing it was converted to black and white in Lightroom 4 with adjustments made to exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, lights, dark, and clarity.
- Ken Maynard
Flare Up
I have always wanted to participate in the photo shooting challenge, brush some of the dust off of my rapidly aging DSLR. Yet the opportunity never presented itself. It was always "wait till this is finished," or "I'll do it tomorrow." As I'm sure you guessed, work was never done and tomorrow never came. More on the photo; I was taking photographs through a compound light microscope and I couldn't get them quite as focused on the light source as I liked. After getting some satisfactory pictures from cat genitals (yes, for real), I really liked the accidental photos I took. It reminded me of the first photo challenge I read about, back in 2010, it was of lens flares. So I'm taking you guys up on your suggestion, and this is my first photo challenge submission of the first photo challenge I ever read! This photo was taken with an iPhone 4S, using the stock camera application and later edited using iPhoto for some minor saturation and levels adjustments.
- Rhys Mucik
Tulips
We went to the tulip Garden near there was lots of colors, colors in the garden was overwhelming, I was confused to choose which tulip color to shoot, finally I settled with yellow. Result is what you are seeing. I shot this with my Nikon D5000 and with 18-200 lens, ISO set to 250 and f/6.3
- Sathish Kumar
Color Me Rad
I wanted to do the anything challenge, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. My niece suggested that I take a picture of something new.. something I've never tried or done before. With that in mind, I decided to bring my Sony Cybershot with me on my first ever 5k. This was the Color Me Rad 5k, so I knew if nothing else, I would get some colorful shots. I couldn't even see through the viewfinder through all the color dust in the air, but I blindly shot photos anyway. This was a group of runners who found themselves back in a color zone after the race. The lined up and had a friend of theirs unload a bag of dust over them. It's not the best framed photo in the world, but I think it captures how much fun and color this event actually is!
- Amanda Jaeger
Open Wide
Using the "no excuses" line as my motivation, I set myself out to take an image for which there was no excuse. Originally, I was planning on making a composite image by taking the face shot and the roach shot separately but my subject seemed less than intimidated by the arthropod and I had to oblige. If I could conjure a single justification for this image it is that we should all be more conscious of what we choose to eat. Many foods today contain ingredients that we would not otherwise consume and increased awareness could empower people to make healthier choices with their diet. This image was captured using a Nikon D5000 sporting a 50mm f/1.8g at ISO 200, f/8.0 and 1/100's of a second shutter speed. Two studio strobes were used. One as a main light and the other on the background and to soften the shadows a bit. The cockroach was already dead and didn't have any other plans that night.
- Diego Barrera
More and More Cats
Not that we need any more cat photos online, I wanted to do something neat for the anything challenge but Florida weather prevailed and damped out basically everything. The cat here likes to go on these crazy running sprees and hide above one of the towel cupboards. Grabbed a few shots as she stared down at the camera and loved the way the light lit half of her face. Shot on a Canon 400D, f/4.5 @ 1/125, ISO 400
- Jack Kelly
We Did Said Anything
I've had this idea for sometime now, but finally had some time after work to shoot it. It was originally a 124 image Brenizer cropped down to what you see here. I shot it by myself as you can imagine it was quite difficult to manage. 5D Markii, 85L, and natural light. Processed in Lightroom and Photoshop CS6.
- Kyle Ford
Tree Frog
I saw this tree frog the day the contest was announced. About an inch long and very lively. Took me a while to get a decent shot. Canon 50D, 100mm macro lens, Canon MT-24EX Flash, 1/250th, f/11
- Chris Andrews
Beat The Heat
A friend of mine was getting a bigger aquarium for the fishes. So i could get the old aquarium to play around. Nils and me we built a couple of weeks ago a custom made laser trigger. So I set up my little studio with the laser trigger, a SB900, another snooted SB900, Macro Lens and my D700. I had to darken the room and started to throw things into the aquarium. That is what came out :-)
F8, Iso 800, Exposure 1Sec, 105mm.
- Markus Enderlin
Blue Bird
My wife and I went on a walk to just relax and enjoy the early spring weather. As we were walking back and the sun was setting, this bird landed on a branch and sat there with an open mouth. I shot it with my Rebel xsi at 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 400. I edited the file in Lightroom.
- Rob Huber
What variety! Nature, pets, urban decay, abstraction and studio work that would put any stock photo house to shame. Kudos to all of you for putting yourselves on the line this week and photographing what you wanted to. The full galleries are below. The big shots are on flickr.
36 Photos You Took Instead Of Anything Else In The Universe