August 2010 photography assignment - Minimalism

[jdporto]

Hope these fit the theme

Who's woods these are...


Bambi, you've inspired me

[casil403]

Iggy...It does remind me of the wallpaper...I didn't get the title until you mentioned the reference. Love the lone wist[y cloud...adds lovely visual interest. Nicely done!

JDporto....Nice work on the gull reminds me of the book "Jonathon Livingston Seagull" Great example of minimalism.
I like the other two photos as well. Just a small note...usually the monthly assignment involves images taken within the month of the assignment. It is not a hard and fast rule but we do try to stick to it as much as we can.

Greg...striking sunrise...damn I can't believe I missed that due to stupid work! it is certainly a beauty though! I saw it on my way to work and thought Damn.....I'll just bet Greg is out there capturing this right now!

Nice one there as well B...Glad I inspired you to see this because you captured it very well.

[asnow]

Whenever I see a picture like "Windows" or the actual windows wallpaper I keep expecting to see the teletubbies.

My hay rolls aren't teletubbies but I thought they were interesting.

[casil403]

Beautiful image asnow, and a great landscape shot, but it is not what I would think is an example of a minimalist image. The idea in this thread is to create images using a minimalist theme.
For those having trouble figuring out what minimalism is here''s an article I found on the net:
A good tutorial on minimalism found here:
Minimalism in Photography
"How to work with minimalism:
One piece of advice I still remember from my high school photography teacher is this:
“make your subject the strongest point of your photo even though it might take up only a small part of the overall image”
When I’m attempting to take a show with a minimalist feel to it I keep those words in mind.

There are many ways to do it – here’s a few:
pick subjects wisely – obviously for a subject to dominate an image even when it’s relatively small in the scheme of the overall shot it will need to be a fairly striking or contrasting one.
experiment with color – contrasting colors between your subject and the rest of the shot are one way to make it stand out. Perhaps why I was stimulated to write this post was that the ‘blue assignment’ produced so many shots in which the majority of the image was one color with a contrasting subject. Alternatively making the subject the same color as your background can give a minimalist type feeling also. Another strategy that photographers use is to strip the color out of shots – often in post production.
use depth of field – another way to focus the eye on your subject is to strip out detail from the background of your shot by making it blurry. The best way to do this is to use your aperture settings (I’ve written more about this on this tutorial on backgrounds).
crop out distractions - perhaps the most effective way to rid your photos of distracting details and to leave shots with a feeling of space is to crop your shots in a way that edges out the details. This is not always possible of course if the details are in the middle of your images (in that case you might need to learn to use Photoshop) but can often be useful.
Zoom In - in framing your shots utilize your zoom to eliminate distractions
Zoom Out – alternatively zooming out to a wide angle can also give a feeling of space as it decreases the size of distracting elements.
I find that the key to getting great minimalist shots is to take a lot of shots at different exposures, different focal lengths and from different angles. It can sometimes take moving your position as the photographer or tweaking some of your camera’s settings to get things just right.

[JAS_Photo]

[Bandit]

He's looking for something or just looking.

[Greg_Nuspel]

JAS that's great, definitely on the theme

[JAS_Photo]

Thanks, Greg!

[Matt K.]

Could not help myself ....

[Greg_Nuspel]

Could not help myself ....

That's egzactly what I'd expect from you Matt.