Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Seeing Simple Beauty" assignment. The assignment was to look for small things of beauty within scenes that you encounter in everyday life, and photograph an "intimate" composition isolating that beauty from the larger scene.
There were some very, very good images submitted for this assignment, so I know that picking your favorite for the People's Choice award was a challenge. We had a tie this week for the
People's Choice. Congratulations to Becky Jenner for her
Imperfection in the Morning image, and to Tom (Kermit) for his
Indescribable Beauty image. Both of these images were very beautiful images.
I commend Becky for seeing and capturing the backlighting on the web and grass. I thought the background in this image was sufficiently out of focus so that it didn't distract from the primary subject, yet is was recognizable enough to provide context for the scene. Controlling depth of field is something that is very difficult to do with a point and shoot camera. Becky did a great job here by shooting the image at an aperture of f2.8 (which I assume is the largest aperture available for that camera.)
Imperfection in the morning
Tom also did a very good job controlling the depth of field in his
Indescribable Beauty image. Tom explained in his submission how he used a [relatively] small aperture to limit the depth of field and reduce the impact of distracting elements in the background, and how he carefully composed the image and aligned the plane of the sensor with the plane of the three image elements to keep them all in focus. Bumping up the ISO to 800 allowed him to set a fast enough shutter speed to ensure the flowers weren't blurred from movement by the wind. I've awarded Tom's
Indescribable Beauty image
Editor's Choice for Technical Merit.
Indescribable Beauty
I've awarded
Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit to Lars'
My Guitar image. Given the many beautiful images submitted this week, this was a VERY difficult choice. Part of my decision criteria was how well the image met the goals of the assignment, "seeing simple beauty" in our
everyday lives. Therefore, simple scenes that you see every day were a better "fit" for this assignment.
My guitar
I thought the rich colors of the wood grain on Lars' guitar were very successful at evoking a sense of the rich musical tones the guitar would produce. At first I felt that the brighter pink of the upholstery detracted from the primary subject; however, after spending more time with the image, I recognized that the pink added a bright and airy feeling to the image, and that without these lighter tones the image would have been too dark and foreboding. The selective focus on the tuning knobs and gears lends an air of precision to the image, which evokes a sense of crisp precision to the notes I imagine coming from the guitar. Lars'
A Key to Simple Beauty was also a very effective "simple beauty" image. (Rebecca advocated for the key image as Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit; however in the end I chose the guitar image.)
A simple key to beauty
is awarded to Becky Jenner's
Just Hatched image. I liked the inclusion of other butterflies in the image, which helps the viewer understand the miracle of this event. I also liked the dappled appearance of the background (although the image would have been stronger without the blown highlights in the upper left.)
Just hatched
Thank you again for anyone that participated in the assignment. I enjoyed viewing all of the beautiful images.
P.S.
You are also invited to add your comments on these images to this thread. If you are the originator, you can add more detail about the image, or if you have a comment or question on someone else's image, please feel free to post a reply to this thread.
