Picture This

Things Are Looking Up

Staff  |  Jun 5, 2012  |  First Published: May 1, 2012

Our Picture This! assignment this month was “Things Are Looking Up” and readers responded with a great variety of images with a skyward point of view. Many were architectural studies, and the fascinating compositions we received transformed the spaces in which we work, visit, and live. The abstraction engendered by taking a new point of view was certainly visually rewarding in all the entries we saw. It reminded us that some of the best images we can make are those that are made by looking anywhere but straight ahead, and we think when you look at the images below you’ll agree.

Silo Staircase

Sandra Wittman made this image inside a silo at the Spring Valley Nature Center & Heritage Farm in Schaumburg, Illinois. She photographed with a Canon EOS 30D and a Sigma 10-20mm lens; exposure was f/11 at 1/30 sec at ISO 640.
© Sandra Wittman

Aloft

Francoise Macomber caught this nest gathering moment with a fast 1/1000 sec shutter speed at f/8 with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 80-400mm lens.
© Francoise Macomber

St. Peter’s Cathedral Rotunda

Looking up in cathedrals is always an amazing sight, as evidenced by this heavenward gaze photographed by Tom Faranda. Exposure with a Nikon D7000 and a Nikkor 18-200mm lens was f/4.5 at 1/125 sec.
© Tom Faranda

High-Tension Wires

Paul Lenz made this geometric study by placing the camera at dead center of the base of this high-tension wire. Exposed on Fujichrome Sensia with a Nikon N80, then scanned on an Epson 4990 and converted to black and white.
© Paul Lenz

Market Street, San Francisco

Paul Christopherson made this photo with a Canon PowerShot S5 IS and then desaturated and added grain to it in Photoshop CS3.
© Paul Christopherson

Marina Mall

Parallels and grids make for a visually playful image of the Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi. Spyros Zafiratos photographed with a Nikon Coolpix P1 with an exposure of f/3.8 at 1/100 sec.
© Spyros Zafiratos

Balloon Ride

Tom Rawson made this photo of the inside of a hot air balloon during a flight with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel. Exposure through a Canon 24-70mm lens was f/4 at 1/200 sec.
© Tom Rawson

Glass Reflections

This seeming collage is the result of glass reflections of a trade fair in the roof of the World Trade Center in Bucharest, Romania. Graham Kerr made this photo with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P200 with an exposure of f/3.5 at 1/160 sec.
© Graham Kerr

Powers Building

The Powers Building in Rochester, New York, photographer Don Menges wrote, was constructed in 1869 and is built around an irregular courtyard that allows light and ventilation to every room and corridor. This “looking straight up” photo was made with a Nikon D700 and a Tamron 17-35mm lens. HDR from seven bracketed shots.
© Don Menges

Gateway To Infinity

Gary Larsen made this abstract of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, with an infrared-converted Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 16-35mm lens. Exposure was f/11 at 1/200 sec.
© Gary Larsen

Detroit Institute Of Arts

Lily Adzigian made this photo of the ceiling in the Armory Gallery at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She photographed with a Canon PowerShot G10 with an exposure of f/3.5 at 1/25 sec. (By the way, Lily’s 12 years old and her father says she has a good eye. We agree.)
© Lily Adzigian

Gold Bridge

This abstract of the Gold Bridge in Old Town Sacramento, California, was photographed by Tom Green with a Nikon D700 converted to infrared and a Nikkor 28-300mm lens. Exposure was f/16 at 1/45 sec at ISO 800; the image was processed using a “digital solar” routine the photographer developed.
© Tom Green

Free-Form Sculpture

Robert Ciardi made this photo from underneath a metal sculpture in a park in Helsinki, Finland. Exposure with a Sony DSC-V3 was f/4 at 1/250 sec.
© Robert Ciardi

Old-Time Flyover

Taken at the Wings Over Houston Airshow, this looks like a bird as much as a plane. Fredric Fink made this photo with a Canon EOS 20D with an 80-400mm lens and an exposure of f/9 at 1/640 sec.
© Fredric Fink

Staircase

The classic nautilus-like shape of this circular staircase was captured by Phillip M. Klasskin in the famous Melk Abbey in Melk, Austria. Exposure with a Canon PowerShot A80 was f/2.8 at 1/60 sec.
© Phillip M. Klasskin

Picture This! – Our Next Assignment
Stacking & Tele-Compression
Telephoto lenses do bring you closer to distant subjects, but they also offer an optical bonus; the effect known as “stacking,” where distant subjects seem to sit atop one another and create a mostly 2D effect. Our Picture This! assignment this month is to use a telephoto lens and create images with “stacked” looks that contain multiple planes and subjects that are brought not only closer to you the photographer but look even closer together to each other in the frame. This photo shows the water towers of New York and was made with a Canon EOS 40D and an EF 28-135mm lens, which at 135mm gave an effective focal length of about 200mm.


© George Schaub

Please Read This
It is important that you read and follow these guidelines. We need to follow this procedure because of the large volume of images we receive. If you have any questions, please e-mail us at: editorial@shutterbug.com.

1) Images sent to us cannot be returned. You retain complete copyright over the images, but do grant us permission to print your image(s) in the magazine and on our website, www.shutterbug.com.

2) Because images are not returned please send a quality print or duplicate transparency. We will not accept or view images on CD, ZIP, or any other electronic media.

3) Images will be selected on the basis of content and technical quality. Please mark your outer envelope with the topic of the month (for example, “Wide View”).

4) Enclose a short caption with the image stating camera, lens, film and exposure, plus location. If you are submitting an image with a recognizable person we must have a model release or signed permission from that person to reproduce their image in the magazine and on the website.

5) Please submit no more than three photos for consideration (4x6 up to 81/2x11).

Send your image and information to:
Picture This! Shutterbug Magazine,
1415 Chaffee Dr., Suite #10, Titusville, FL 32780.
Deadline for submission: June 15, 2012.
Images will appear in our September 2012 issue.
Our next topic: Deep Depth Of Field
Deadline: July 15, 2012
Publication Date: October, 2012

Please note: We receive hundreds of submissions for Picture This! each month and want to be sure we properly identify each image we publish. Please be sure to attach your name and image information to the back of each submission.

Want to see images selected for past Picture This! assignments? Go to www.shutterbug.com and click on Picture This! in the “More Articles…” box on the homepage.

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