You’ve all seen a variety of photo challenges/assignments out there nowadays; some from those who do it on the regular and some new ones from us who are getting creative while staying home. I like to watch YouTube videos to see what others are doing, to learn new things and to just keep myself entertained and that led to this.
I was watching Ted Forbes , The Art of Photography, where he mentioned that another photographer, Thomas Heaton, did a video about Ted’s photo assignment of studying Josef Sudek ; taking photos using only available light. It was interesting watching Heaton, who is a great landscape photographer, try to replicate one of Sudek’s famous photos. View that video here.
The assignment didn’t involve anything that I didn’t have in the house already so I accepted the assignment and like Heaton I discovered it was not that easy to do! While I think I did a decent job on the lighting and shadows, I could not get that slant that Sudek seems to have in almost all of his images.
In the end it taught me that lighting (always) is so very important in making an image and that when using natural light you are often at it’s mercy. How bright the light will be and at what time, what direction it will be coming from, how the shadows will be based upon the angle of light, clouds can be your best friend or your biggest nightmare…. and on and on. Part of the assignment was to study the light coming into your home and where it was during different times of the day and how that effected the shadows. That was a good lesson!
Here is the Sudek image Heaton and I were trying to replicate.
And here are my attempts.
I would either get the slant almost right but not the direction of the shadow or the shadow going the right way but no slant. My intent is to keep at it until I get them both going the way I want them to, unless I find something else to try that appeals to me more. A photographer friend challenged me to do self portraits. I don’t know about that; far more comfortable behind the camera!
Have you been doing any challenges/assignments? How’s it been working out for you? We could probably all use some new ideas.
Teri 📷
Images by T.Dashfield Photography 
I think you did a great job! I’ll need to go check out Heaton’s attempt.
Thanks! It was an interesting assignment – phew!
Stunning!!!
Thank you 🙂
nice.
yes it is all about the light.
it is all about the time of year, time of day etc.
put your own twist on the subject instead of trying to copy what was done
Well the idea of the one photographer was to copy the classic so I went with that…and that eventually morphed into doing my own thing.
🙂🙂🙂
Beautiful! You did good!
These are amazing! Staying home has definitely been a challenge. Since you are looking at other photographers for inspiration, have you looked into Kim Keever? We just did a project studying his work in class, he does amazing work with paint in water, and it was so much fun. If you have some paint, I highly suggest playing around with his technique!
Thank you and I will check out Kim Keever. I’ve seen many tutorials on water, oil, paint, etc. and have meant to try one but I always wind up doing something else. One day I will get to it 🙂