Photos of the Week - Week 4

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 4, Color Shift

Photo by JoAnn Banks

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JoAnn says: 

I thought this was going to be fairly easy, but it ended up being a lot more difficult than I thought it should be. I placed a slice of orange on my light pad to take the photo. Then in PS I selected each orange section and changed the hue and saturation. My goal was to create a mini color wheel. I clipped each hue and saturation adjustment to each orange section that I had selected creating many layers. Then I cropped to square and added a colorful stroke around the image.

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 4 - Leaves

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 4, Leaves

Photo by Doris Steppler

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Doris says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 4 - Books

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 4, Books

Photo by Carol Huston

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Carol says: 

2024 AI Image Club

 2024 AI Image Club:

Week 4, Amusement park

Photo by Allison Haggatry

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Allison says:

Wild roller coaster ride

Prompt: roller coaster, black metal scaffolding, mad design, minimalist, steampunk, vintage retro, graffiti, pastel colors
Model: SDXL
Art Style: Dali
Edited further in PS.

I've been playing with Imagine some more. Trying to see how the various sliders affect the final result.
If you enter a Seed number (ie 1234) and don't change the prompts you'll keep getting the same result.
Changing the CFG scale slider from the default of 3 to a max of 15 gives a simplified variation on the original image.
If you change only the aspect ratio (from 1:1 to 4:3) then you get quite a new result.
I find that a lot of the AI results seem random, well it is bc it uses a random seed each time. But by understanding how the sliders work maybe there can be a bit of control of the final result. If I randomly get something interesting then I'll reuse that seed and vary the other parameters to see what happens.
So many possibilities! 

Photos of the Week - Week 4

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 4, Color Shift

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says: 

Our bench sits on a meditation area called The Eye of the Raven. It was snowing - so this is cold and gray. In Photoshop I added a layer and pained a multi-colored gradient - blended that with a blending mode (I think Overlay), and then reduced the opacity a bit. I think it looks altered, but not crazy altered. I wanted to see the details and also preserve the snowflakes. I shot this with my 600mm from our breakfast table.

2024 AI Image Club - Amusement park

2024 AI Image Club:

Week 4, Amusement park

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 4 - Books

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 4, Books

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:

I enjoy seeing the curve of the pages and the repetition of that shape. Edited in Prisma app with Huawei HiAI.

Photos of the Week - Week 3

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 3, Entry

Photo by Randee Wald

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Randee says: 

Welcome To The Planet- Keeping your head above water!

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 3- Find a Line

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 3, Find a Line

Photo by Christiane Shrimpton

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Christiane says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 3 - Landscape

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 3, Landscape

Photo by Joan Marycz

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Joan says: 

2024 AI Image Club

 2024 AI Image Club:

Week 3, Snowy Woods

Photo by Sharon Miller

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Sharon says:

I used Bing Create with the following prompt. "Tired rider with a small white horse. Horse has a harness with sleigh bells and is shaking its head. They are between a dark, snowy wood and a frozen lake. 19th century era moody scene."
This image has some problems with the horse's back legs and the rider's hands, but it captured the mood I wanted the best of any others I tried. I find it really interesting to see what AI is doing based on the prompt language and how "wrong" it gets some of the images.

Photos of the Week - Week 2

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 3, Entry

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says: 

This is the entry to what we call The Eye of the Raven - a place with amazing 360 vistas, but more importantly a rock, a bench, and a place for meditation. This is a smal Japanese style arching footbride covered in snow. I waited until the flickering LED lights came on and tried to find the balance of natural light and the glowing lights. There were many eits - layers - and hopefully, other than the edge treatment, it doesn't look overprocessed.

2024 AI Image Club -  Snowy Woods

2024 AI Image Club:

Week 3, Snowy Woods

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:  

Photos of the Week - Week 2

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 2, Delicate

Photo by Karen Mackowski

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Karen says: 

At one point while taking photos of this dried leaf, it fell on the floor and I accidently stepped on it. It stuck to my sock and when I pulled it off, the leaf tore. I decided to go with it torn which really illustrates how delicate the leaf is. Minor adjustments in PS and changed to black and white.

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 2 - Two Rectangles

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 2, Two Rectangles

Photo by Jon Harwood

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Jon says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 2 - Vantage Point

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 2, Vantage Point

Photo by Olivia Edwards

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Olivia says: 

2024 AI Image Club

 2024 AI Image Club:

Week 2, Castle

Photo by Mary de Greef

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Mary says:

For this image I asked for a castle made of chess pieces on a chess board and used the gothic style. This is from the Imagine app. I don't see too much of the chess pieces in the castle but the overall composition appeals to me. I like the leading lines taking you right up the castle steps and I like the lighting and framing by the trees as well. It feels like the chess pieces are guarding the castle. 

Photos of the Week - Week 2

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 2, Delicate

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says: 

This is a species of ice plant that I had outside in a pot and brought in. It doesn't have a prolific bloom like the typcial ice plants - but... it's winter and bloomed for me...one blossom! I grabbed my macro lens for the shot - and in editing - overexposed a bit and used the dehaze slider to make it even softer. Who comes up with these challenge topics anyway? I need to have a talk with them

2024 AI Image Club -  Castle

2024 AI Image Club:

Week 2, Castle

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 2 - Vantage Point

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 52, Vantage Point

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:

This is the camera placed under the windowsill of my studio, looking directly down onto my bag of Native American flutes, and a couple of other musical instruments. You can see my toes.

Photos of the Week - Week 1

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 1, Year Word

Photo by John Van Walleghen

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John says: 

Look Closer - From a distance, it looked like a white-headed bird was on top of the main trunk of this tree. Upon closer examination, it becomes part of the tree. My photos this year will get a Closer Look!

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 1 - Selective Focus

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 1, Selective Focus

Photo by Rose Penoyer

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Rose says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 1 - Year Word

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 1, Year Word

Photo by Kathleen Madden

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Kathleen says: 

Critique Group Challenge:

Week 1, Year Word - Transition

Photo by Ricky Tims
from the 2024 Critique Group Challenge

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Ricky says: 

It seems change is inevitable, and most of you know big changes are happening in my world. I'm zero concerned about it. I can fight it and be miserable, or I can go with the flow and let the winds of change just take me to where I should be. This concept is both real and metaphorical. We had snow - and while taking this...blizzard velocity winds. I opted to take a photo of our little "Mirkwood" forest with the bird houses and prayer flags (and a raven) and start at left with a BnW pencil sketch that transitions into a BnW photo, that transitions into color, that transitions into something colorful and abstract. Transition - not necessarily a bad thing.

Photos of the Week - Week 52

Critique Group Challenge: 

Week 52, Favorite Photo

Photo by Bob McInteer

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Bob says: 

When I traveled to Shiprock in northwestern New Mexico in October, I arrived well before sunset, shot well into the evening, overnighted in nearby Farmington, and returned before sunrise the following day. This one is a composite of many images I took on a locked tripod after sunset.

The light on the terrain coming from the left and the faint glow on the horizon are the last vestiges of the sunset. The streaks from the stars were taken in full darkness, (39) one-minute exposures with a one second gap between each. These were laid over each other using “lighten” blending mode. I went in and took out some distracting trails from passing aircraft.

You might be interested to know that the very bright trails were mainly from the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) scooping down and behind Shiprock.

52-Week Photo Challenge Class
Week 52 - Favorite Photo

Week 52 Photo Challenge:

Week 52, Favorite Photo

Photo by Liz Carroll

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Liz  says:  

Smart Phone Photo Challenges
Week 52 - Favorite Photo

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 52, Favorite Photo

Photo by Warren Lee

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Warren says: 

This year I had great success with landscapes, macro details on blossoms and butterflies. I opted for butterflies for this week’s (favorite photo) challenge.

Back in November, I had been hoping that I would be able to find a glass winged butterfly at the pavilion and was pleasantly surprised. I zoomed with my feet and the lens as I used the IPhone 15 Pro Max 5x lens to capture the moment as the glass winged butterfly was seeking warmth from the paving stones.

I am a little slower getting up from the ground from these kinds of shots these days, but it is such a delight to see and share moments with this challenging butterfly. I imported the image into PhotoShop for finer edits. Wishing you (and yours) an amazing weekend.

Smart Phone Challenge:

Week 52, Favorite Photo

Photo by Ricky Tims

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Ricky says:

Of course the trip to Portugal was a highlight of 2023, and while I had many images I liked, I opted to cull those to only images from that trip. This is the old historic library at the University of Coimbra. Just glorious.

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Critique Group Challenge:

Week 52, Favorite Photo

Photo by Ricky Tims
from the 2023 Critique Group

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Ricky says:

This was extra challenging - my "favorite"? - so many wonderful images and great memories. I decided that the Portugal trip was a landmark, so I narrowed it down to that - but then - was there really a "favorite". I settled on this image because it was on a foggy/rainy day in Sintra (magical), at the Palace of Pena, had traditional Portuguese tiles - architecture - designs - cobblestones - and Hugo's brother, Fabio. So there were a lot of my favorite things in one image.