As suggested by Dean, the challenge for the month of June will be to have a fun time with the standard cliches in photography.
You know these cliches - the glorious sunsets, cute puppies, the touristy pictures of the Eiffel Tower and as in Dean's suggestion the tourist 'holding up' the leaning tower of Pisa.
This will be more about creativity, and less about creating the perfect aesthetic. Also, I am all for allowing the use of AI to embellish an existing image (be that generative fill or adding content) but please NO computer-generated AI images (eg MidJourney).
This is a challenge that I personally struggle with, so please treat this as a fun exercise to stretch your creativity and support those who make the effort.
For my own initial entries I offer you a glorious beach ICM sunset, along with a total eclipse shot 'captured' during that recent event.
I will reveal the inspiration for these images at a later date - feel free to guess as to how these were accomplished.
I am looking forward to seeing what folks come up with, and am intrigued to see what Jenny does with her local Amish community :-)
Hi Alan,
Both of these are cool. I really like the layers of the first one. I have no idea you did that one. I'll take a guess at how you did the eclipse shot. Did you zoom out while taking the photo?
I'll add my own entry to this challenge as well. This is an old image taken in 2015. Similar to yours, this is also a beach sunset. The thing I find kind of hilarious about this image is this was my first ever attempt at ICM. My first ever press of the button trying an ICM. And I think it's still by best attempt to date, haha! ICM isn't something I really do a lot of. I mess around with it every now and then and I do find it interesting though.
ICM can appear to be extremely variable but with a bit of practice comes a level of familiarity and an ability to predict results.
This is a nice attempt. If interested I'd suggest you/others dedicate time and take a large number of shots (you can delete later), paying attention to how shutter/camera movement speed influence results.
From there, expand to direction of camera movement etc. It's all a learning process....
OK, so here's the 'twist on the photos I presented.
1- the cliche of the ICM sunset is not a sunset at all, but an arrangement of clothes that I thought best matched the color scheme (from wat I had on hand).
ICM WAS used to pan across the clothes, with an amount of generative expand (in PS) used to create the correct aspect ratio.
2. - after witnessing and capturing the total eclipse I questioned if the power button on my PC could be used to replicate (especially as disk access was being indicated).
This pushed the level of my PS skills, using generative fill to remove the USB port and trying to emulate the corona by use of a radial blur layer. I never did get the color right, but as it was just and experiment thought it a decent enough attempt.
Here are the originals, along with a 'real' eclipse reference.