Weekly Photo Challenge: Culture

Pouring water on Buddha statues at Shwedagon in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo courtesy of Aaron Joel Santos.

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Aaron Joel Santos.

Culture. Culture is a bit of a loaded word. In a photograph, it can embody everything and nothing. So where do we draw the line? Shopping culture, hippy culture, Asian culture, Thai culture, ancient culture, and on and on. These phrases have different meanings. For me, as a working travel photographer, being able to show culture, in all of its various guises, is crucial to the success of an image.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Lost in the Details

Photo courtesy of Christopher Martin

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Christopher Martin.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

Photo courtesy of Jared Bramblett

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Jared Bramblett. Read on for more about this week’s theme and his photography tips!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Geometry

Photo courtesy of Quintin Lake

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Quintin Lake of Quintin Lake Architectural Photography. Read on for more about this week’s theme and his photography tips!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Everyday Life

Photo courtesy of Jon Sanwell

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Jon Sanwell of Without an H. Read on for more about this week’s theme and his photography tips!

Everyday Life. This challenge is all about people and the things they do every day: working, eating, drinking, chatting, dreaming, walking, exercising, or any of those things we do all the time without really thinking about it. Take a walk around your neighbourhood, or around the streets where you work or study, and take a look at the people you see. (The shot above was taken at lunch time on a street in Ho Chi Minh City.) You might think that your neighbourhood isn’t very interesting, but imagine that you’re giving a guided tour to someone from the other side of the world—what’s normal for you might be extraordinary to them.

Share a photo that means EVERYDAY LIFE to you!

Tip: My advice for taking pictures of people in public is to be friendly, open, and honest. Smile. Talk to people. Not everybody likes being photographed, but plenty of people do, especially if the photographer is nice to them. Secondly, remember that this challenge isn’t just about people; it’s also about the things they do—and that means providing context. I love taking close head-and-shoulders portraits, but they don’t necessarily show everyday life, as they don’t have any context. A wider angle, from up close, shows us something about what the subject is doing, and puts the viewer right into the frame.

Jon Sanwell is an English language teacher with a camera. Originally from Tunbridge Wells in the UK, he is now living in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam. Follow his recent work on his blog, Without an H.

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New to The Daily Post? Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, you’re invited to get involved in our Weekly Photo Challenge to help you meet your blogging goals and give you another way to take part in Post a Day / Post a Week. Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, we’ll provide a theme for creative inspiration. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Friday when the next photo theme will be announced.

2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “Weekly Photo Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.

3. Subscribe to The Daily Post so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements. Sign up via the email subscription link in the sidebar or RSS.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Near and Far

Photo courtesy of Brian Cooney

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Brian Cooney. Read on for more about this week’s theme and his photography tips!

Near and Far. We’re excited about this week’s photo challenge, near and far, and hope it inspires you to play with perspective, which can give sweeping images of beautiful locations more oomph and power. Perspective is what makes a flat two-dimensional image, such as a photograph, appear like it is three-dimensional. To create this effect, you can use features like diagonal lines, which converge within the frame and literally suck in the viewer.

In this image of Tra Bui in County Sligo, Ireland, the rocks in the foreground and the lines in the water on the right guide your eyes to the center of the picture. Here, I use a small aperture (f 16), which creates good depth of field and a sharp focus from the foreground and into the distance. For this shot, I also hunkered down low on the ground with my camera on a tripod. I like to shoot from a low viewpoint, as this makes the convergence greater.

Share a photo that means NEAR AND FAR to you!

Tip: In landscape photography, keep the horizon level: a tilting horizon can be disconcerting to the eye. When I shoot, I use a small spirit level that slots into the camera hot shoe, where my flash is normally mounted, to confirm that I have my horizon level. If you don’t manage to get the horizon level, you can crop and straighten your image on your computer later. Also, when photographing landscapes, it is generally better to shoot when the light is softer—early morning or evening light. Cloudy days are great, too, because the light stays soft all day.

Brian Cooney is a photographer interested in all photography, especially street and landscape photography. He lives in the west of Ireland from where he leads photography tours to breathtaking locations all around Ireland. See what he’s up to on his blog.

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New to The Daily Post? Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, you’re invited to get involved in our Weekly Photo Challenge to help you meet your blogging goals and give you another way to take part in Post a Day / Post a Week. Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, we’ll provide a theme for creative inspiration. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Friday when the next photo theme will be announced.

2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “Weekly Photo Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.

3. Subscribe to The Daily Post so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements. Sign up via the email subscription link in the sidebar or RSS