I had this challenge in mind when I visited a garden this weekend in
DC. I took hundreds of pictures of flowers and girly stuff in jpg.
When I finally returned home I realized that I had nearly no control
of the photos when I applied the sabattier effect. The only photos I
had in raw format were of the wing of the airplane I took to beat the
storm home. It's grainy and awful but I was able to control some of
the image properties. Kind of sad I wasn't able to get my flowers
under control though; they were much better than this wing.
Nikon D700
Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 @24mm f/2.8
0.769seconds
ISO 3200
-Aaron Hwang
Shot on a T3i, with a 18-55mm. At ISO:100 Shutterspeed: 1/20. Had to
hold the tripod upside down along the water to capture this.
Im 15 and live in New Hampshire, and just started doing some serious
photography. Road my bike down to the river a few days ago to take a
colorful picture of the autumn foliage, then I thought, I wonder it
would look like if i inverted it!
-Brennish Thomson
Camera: Polaroid Land Model 350 (1969).
Film: FugiFilm FP-3000B Instant Black and White Film.
Speed: 3000
Back in 2007, while working at a rural phone company doing video production, an installer brought me an old camera box that had been sitting in the basement of the corporate office since 1977. Inside the box was a Polaroid Land Model 350 and some accessories. I instantly (pun intended) fell in love with the camera and I've held onto since then, but have not used it until today.
I saw this contest on Giz and thought it would be cool to shoot a photo with my Land camera if my film and battery came in before I forgot about the contest (I forget every time). Just then, BLAM, there's a knock at the door. The USPS lady brought me the battery and film that I ordered online over the weekend, so I was pretty excited. I grabbed my dog Shyla and started taking photos.
After fiddling with the speed, Iris and focus (note, coolest focus I've ever used), I knocked out about 4 bad photos (two over and under exposed each) before I finally got the hang of it. Many puppy treats later, I knocked out this photo, wiped off the gooey chemicals and scanned the image.
-Charles Frisby
Camera: Nikon D3100
Lens: Nikon 18mm-55mm
Stats: 28mm focal length
f4.5
1/100 exposure
I ride by this everyday to and from work. This past Friday, thinking about the photo contest, I brought my camera to work. This is one of the pictures I took. This picture is of a marina looking into mid town Manhattan, its from the New Jersey side. The tallest building in the background is the Empire State Building.
-Christopher Littlefield
I was out fishing with a friend of mine at Tammisaari, Finland. We had been freezing our fingers for several hours (it was about -8 C) when I saw this view. Clouds were big and pink, sun was setting behind my back and there was a full moon showing at the same time. I just had to put my rod down to take the shot.
I'm calling the shot "UltraSuperMegaMoonCloudSunset" :)
Sony SLT a33
Sigma 18-50 mm 1:2.8 EX D
Focal length 50 mm
Shutter speed 1/200
F5
ISO 200
-Eero Huhtamo
Canon 5D Mark II
EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
F-Stop:4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 250
We were shooting some scenes in a friend's pizza place, for an ad he's making, and we bought some 5 or 6 giant helium balloons for one of the shoots, while he was setting the ginormous balloons I snapped this pic, for size comparison thats a full adult male head, next to one of the balloons. The best part of the day was walking 3 blocks from the party store where we filled up the balloons down to the pizza place, through Bogotá's (Colombia) hip zone "La Zona Rosa", with everybody just gazing upon two 6 foot adult males with giant brightly coloured balloons floating atop their heads, for some reason bystanders couldn't help but smile.
-Felipe Vargas
I went ahead and used my HTC EVO 4G for this challenge rather than my DSLR. I wanted to see if i could get a good effect that would pop, and actually say i didnt use Photoshop. So i came across this dried rose at a desk at work. I whipped my phone and shot it using SOLARIZE filter. I like how the background and stem look unaffected but the rose was. It looks like a InfraRed picture of a rose. HTC EVO 4G, Stock camera app, SOLARIZE, 8MP, ISO 148, Focal length 5mm.
-Felix Garcia
This shot was taken with a Nikon D90 using a Tokina 12-24mm lens at 20mm (which would equate to 30mm if the D90 had a full-sized sensor). Taken at f5.0, 1/60, using flash bounced off of a mirror. Since I'm the only model I had handy, it was of necessity taken close-up. I'd been considering a more traditional landscape, but figured everyone else probably was also. Woke up this morning thinking of thiis shot and thought I'd try it out.
-Fred Mezger
Coffee (Self Portrait)
As soon as I saw this challenge, my mind went into overdrive trying to figure out what to shoot. I love Man Ray's work, especially his solarization pieces, so I channeled my inner Dadaist/Surrealist while thinking about image composition. When I sat down Friday morning with my coffee, I caught a glimpse of my reflection floating on the surface of the black liquid. I immediately knew what I was going to do. Thankfully, I got the shot I needed, with my face reflecting in the coffee, on the third attempt (so my coffee didn't get cold). I processed the image in CS5 (converting it to black and white, and using more than just the solarize filter), making adjustments to try get the aesthetic just right. For the record, to give some context of how the processing changed the image's shadows and highlights, the coffee mug is black on the outside, blue on the inside, and I used a piece of highly reflective gold lamé fabric to cover the table I set up the shot on.
shot with a Nikon D3100 - ISO 100, f/9, 1 second shutter speed, with a 55-200mm lens @ 75mm
-Gabe Loewenberg
Nikon D70 18-70 3,5-4,5 @ 18mm f22.
Classic Brooklyn Bridge angle. Used the built in flash to highlight the subject. High levels of contrast, clarity and fill light to create a HDR feeling to the picture in the raw-editing.
-Gustaf Martinsson
I took this picture at the Browns Point Community Park & Lighthouse in North Tacoma on Puget Sound. It was a hugely windy day and though the sky was clear & blue for 20 minutes dark ass clouds were rolling in like porn window pop-ups. There were no clouds at this moment so the was a solid color for about 200 hundred miles. The Kite Boarder was catching huge air & when with the wind was going nearly 50mph.
Just 10 minutes later the wind died, the clouds poured, & visibility was about 200yds.
Across the Sound you can see South Maury Island. (Home of the very first Alien contact & earthly death. I went to high school with the Grandson of Dahl and met him once to hear the story at the site.)
The picture was a quick snap in color, although I was doing B&W practice I used the color as a reference for my B&W practice. I was looking for limits to shooting handheld at high ISO while still letting in enough light to make a usable shot without moving to much and losing sharpness. It ended up being the perfect shot for the solarization.
I cropped out a bit of land that was over saturated at the bottom and made a wee color curve edit to show the contrast of the different ranges of the Olympic Mountains in the background.
The dets:
Sony Nex-5 with thw 18-200 kit lens.
F/13
1/250 sec.
ISO-200
o step
focal length- 55mm
Max aperture 4.97
35mm focal length 82
-Jason Morton
Here is my best shot after a few different ideas were tossed out. This was taken of my daughter just as she was sitting down for dinner.
Nikon D90, F4.5, 1/60, ISO200, 50mm on my 28 - 200 1:3.5-5.6G compact zoom, on camera flash. Gimp was used for the editing
-Jereme Skelton
Lately, I have been pushing myself to practice taking more spontaneous photos. I happened to be at Disneyland with some friends and we came across the Dapper Dans who were doing a little performance down along Main Street. So we stayed and watched for a while. At first, I was focusing on them as my primary subjects. Then I considered having other people in my photos, and as soon as I stepped back, I noticed my friend getting ready to take her own photo. So I got ready, waited for just the right moment and got the picture. Normally I would not have used the original image, however, being that for the challenge we post processed and solarized it, I made a note to revisit this photo when I sorted through all of mine after our trip.The photo then took on a more conceptual feel and started to grow on me, ending up as the photo I would submit.
This photo was taken with a
Canon 60D
Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.8 & 1/400 ISO 200
-Jonny Tai
The EL
Taken with Apple iPhone 5 native camera app. Processed with Snapseed + Photogene2
Where: Chicago, IL - CTA Blue Line LaSalle station
Nice reflections and shadows at this train station - next stop, happy hour! =)
-Julio Kuramoto
Camera: iPhone 4s, f2.8, ISO 50, 35mm focal length, manipulated in Photoshop
Last night the wind was howling and I was home alone watching American Horror Story. Suddenly there was a horrendous crash right outside the window. I live in the woods, so I assumed a bear or some other wild animal had tipped something over off my deck. I was a little scared to look, but finally turned on the back light. I saw my 13 foot umbrella lying on its side. The wind had lifted it up enough that it fell sideways and crashed my glass patio tabletop to smithereens. This morning all the millions of glass pieces were all sparkley in the sun so I grabbed my iPhone and shot a few pictures of the shattered glass before I swept it all up.
-Lynn Salce
I had originally taken some cityscape pictures I intended to use for this challenge, but I wasn't happy with the result - everything looked like a bad album cover a fifteen-year-old would design. I was going to give up when I started playing around with some pictures I had taken this weekend for my Dad of his rose garden. I'm blessed to live in California, and you'd think it was summer and not nearly Halloween here - my Dad wanted to show off his garden still in bloom. After using the solarize option in Photoshop Elements, I played around with the adjustments a little until I got this result. It didn't come out as extreme as my cityscapes, but still kind of different.
-Marion Cotesworth-Hay
This Weekend, in switzerland the early winter started. We got our first snow for the season
During a little walk, i took a picture of that snow covered tree and tried the solarize effect.
Taken with a Nikon D800, 24-70 Lens at 56mm
Best Regards Markus Enderlin
-Markus Enderlin
This was an interesting challenge. I ended up downloading GIMP, which is a pretty slick application. Hopefully, I can figure this thing out a little more to help my photography. I went to a local park and started taking some shots of sailboats on the ocean. The only problem was that when I "solarized" them, they looking nearly the same as their black & white counterpart. I ended up going with the soccer goals because the "solarization" really altered the photo. The bright white goals suddenly became jet black. Fun stuff.
Tech info:
Canon EOS REBEL T1i, 1/320, f/8, 55mm, ISO 100
-Matthew Johnson
Fujifilm s100fs — F3.8 — 1/13" — ISO100 — 25mm — Post Processing with GIMP
"Storm"
For much of Friday and Saturday, Hurricane Sandy produced nothing by dark, drab clouds. It wasn't until sunset on Saturday that the clouds started to break up and let some light through. The remaining clouds were colorful and eye-catching. It wasn't until the image was solarized that they revealed their true, sinister nature.
-Mike Case
Orchid
I took this picture in my bedroom using the ceiling light fixture as my light source. The Orchids are synthetic (bought at a craft store) and were positioned over my bed using a spare tripod stand. Picture taken with my Sony Nex-5 - 50mm, f/8, 1/6sec at ISO 200.
-Mohit Arora
First snow of the year, less autumn, more winter…
-Nils Rohwer
In the comments under the challenge, someone suggested doing a Google image search for solarization (their point being that most of the time, the result is awful). It struck me as good advice, and I quickly saw that the best pictures seemed to be ones with strong lines and repeating patterns. Then I knew what my subject should be: the Urban Light exhibit at LACMA, which is conveniently across the street from the office I'm working at right now. Fortunately, I've taken to carrying my dSLR with me to work. So on my lunch break I went over and took a bunch of pictures, mostly lining up the sun behind lamp globes. I don't have full Photoshop, but I looked up a tutorial for Photoshop Elements and followed those instructions, using the Solarize filter and then adjusting the levels until the results looked right. (Curves doesn't work quite the same in PSE as it does in Photoshop.) Of all the pictures I tried when I got home, this is the one that had the best lines and an eerie almost-natural-but-not-quite look to it.
Nikon d3100 with a Tamron 18-200mm lens
-Rachel Mullin
The second I saw the images in the shooting challenge I was hooked. I shoot a lot of photography in infrared and this had a very similar otherworld look and feel that I get with infrared. My front yard is perfect for this type of shot as there are many variances in light patterns with the different type of trees we have. The shot was made with a Nikon D200 with the Nikon 18x200vr lens @ f/7.1 shutter was 1/200 sec and ISO was at 200.
-Ron Harmeyer
Shooting summary
Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 18mm
Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/15
I was staying with friends for the weekend and looking for something around their house to shoot for my first ever shooting challenge entry. Early in the afternoon, I spotted these blinds and thought they might be interesting solarized. I was watching Silent Hill while editing and wanted them to look eerie, like something out of a horror movie- appropriate since the house is still decked out with bloody footprints and cobwebs from their Halloween party.
-Sarah Ranney
I took this photo out of my window in Calgary, Alberta, as a warm
weather front was coming in with fog at the base of the Rocky
Mountains. I only switched the shadows in this image instead of the
highlights in most solarized images, because I wanted the fog to stay
bright.
Sony α550 with a Sigma AF 180mm f/3.5 EX HSM APO macro lens
f/9 1/1000s ISO 200
-Tom Bielecki
This picture was taken with a Rebel T2i camera @ 1/160 second, F8, and a Sigma 10-20 lens @ 20mm.
We were eating at noon in the Rockies section of Canada when the deer came for a drink.
The picture was converted into solarized grayscale by using the channel mixer in Photoshop CS5. Green was 200%, red was -200%, and blue was -136%.
The original color picture was used as an overlay at 20% in order to tint the picture.
-Vic Huebner