dogwood

‘Your subject should be facing the frame, walking into the frame, this keeps your subject “in” the frame and engaging with it. Give your subject room to move.’

Not sure what to do with this one. I have been looking at what others have posted and although there are a lot of people or animals literally ‘walking’ into the frame, there are also others which are not so literal. Here are some of my options;

I snapped this wee fellow practising his writing on the school playground a few weeks ago. Such concentration.

black and white photo of child drawing on pavement with chalk

This was taken in New Plymouth when we were in Taranaki for the WOMAD festival. Not sure how much space there is for the subject (my ever patient husband, Nigel!) with all the reflections! But I like the effect.

Another one of Nigel out and about. The Boon Street Arts festival hits Hamilton every year and this is one of the offerings from this year.

Man wearing a strpd tee-shirt and jeans standing against a painted wall looking upwards. The wall is painted pink and blue with a dog in the right corner and other dog paraphernalia across the painting

As we walked along the front in New Plymouth I spotted this dogwalker. It isn’t a great technical photo but I do like the ‘seaside postcard’ effect of the composition.

man walking dog along a promenade by the sea which is in the background. The left side of the photo is the footpath with other walkers and a tall bendy red 'wand' swaying in the wind. The sky is blue.

Week 14 asks us to connect two or three photos together to provoke a thought or to tell a story.

My biggest challenge was finding an app in which I could frame two or three photos. I fell back to ipiccy as this is a photo editing tool I have used before.

I am well behind on my weekly challenges but have had the project titles in my head as I have been out and about. We have recently spent a lot of time in the NZ bush and as it is Autumn, there are heaps of mushrooms about. The other day we found these Slender Parasols up by the trig point in Hamilton Gardens in various stages of development.

three parasol mushrooms in various stages of development.

A new garden has recently opened at Hamilton Gardens. I was not too impressed with the Tudor Garden but I really like the Concept Garden. The squares of water, and different types of plants reflect the squares on land maps. The Māori whakatauki on the wall and the rusted iron water tank tell contradictory stories of the permanence or fragility of the land and the people.

Whatungarongaro te tangata toituu te whenua
As man disappears from sight, the land remains

He peke tangata, apa he peke titoki’
The human family lives on while the branch of the titoki falls and decays.

My third option is a city scape – I used an app called Tiny Planets which is a bit of fun to create the images in this collage. All the images are from the same photo but one is the original and the other two are edited in Tiny Planet.

three images in a row, the middle is a cityscape at sunset, the outer two are derivatives, edited through an app that makes them into planets

Back to nature for the last one. Once again on our wander into Hamilton Gardens on Anzac Day. Autumn is good for seeds as well as mushrooms, and we saw these plants in various stages from fresh green pods to fully blown seeds.

seedburst 2