Here Is Your Weekly Round-Up From The Light Stalking Community

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Hey there Light Stalkers! Another week passed by, and as we get closer to reaching the year's midpoint, we are starting to see some good things coming around the corner!

The most notorious one is the forum moving Rob announced earlier this week. This past week we got plenty of new users that went unnoticed, if you are one of them, please say hi to us here! Feel free to roam as you please; I'm sure you'll find a vast amount of information that will make you grow as photographers.

It is pretty satisfying to see how many of you have started developing out not only a style but also a more profound passion for photography!

We all live busy lives, so today we bring you everything that you need to know! Here you'll see some handpicked thoughts and images from the general chit chat forum as well as some beautiful shots from Tersha's latest challenge on Negative Space. And as you've already guessed it by now, we'll be mentioning some worthy shots from the Shark Tank!

Photo Of The Week – June 24, 2019

Descartes' Internal Monologue – Photo by Click

This week's Photo of the Week goes to this beautiful photograph from Click. Here is what Kent DuFault had to say about it

The POTW goes to Click for the image titled, “‘Descartes' internal monologue”. It was uploaded into the “Weekend Photography Challenge #440 Patterns”.

It takes a degree of effort to create something of interest out of nothing.

I feel that Click's photograph directly falls into this category. It is only through careful subject placement and composition that a photograph, such as this, can maintain attention.

I was also interested in the title. What was the correlation?

It was quite apt actually.

I was not particularly schooled on Rene' Descartes. Although a number of his quotes were quite familiar to me.

After reading up on him, (inspired to do so as a direct result of this photograph by the way…), I discovered that he is considered the father of modern philosophy (amongst other things).

After reading a number of Descartes thoughts and quotes- this photograph quite literally made even more sense to me.

Here are a few of those quotes for you to contemplate…

“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

Cogito ergo sum. (I think; therefore I am.)

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”

You probably recognize at least a couple of these. I particularly like the last one. I think I will write that quote down and put it on my desk.

Congratulations to Click for the POTW win. Have a great week, everyone.

Thank you so much to Click for the beautiful and inspiring photograph and, as always, thank you to Kent for our continued improvement – photographically and philosophically!

 

Weekend Photography Challenge!

Here are some of the fantastic shots from our 439th Challenge – Negative Space!!!

Photo by Seth L

All the separate elements in the water make this shot very pleasant to look at. It has an abstract feeling while still being pretty obvious at the end.

Photo by Dave Watkins

Negative space done right without a doubt! This beautiful shot even has a minimalist feeling enhanced by the rule of thirds. You can never go wrong with the thirds!

Photo by P71

This one made me smile, and made me remember my childhood, thanks a lot for sharing this one, Patrick.

Photo by LeanneS

Whoa! The lines on this photograph are really something. There is a sense of peace achieved here by managing to keep the subject on the water totally still.

Photo by LeanneC

Beyond complying with the theme, this macro photograph is really cute. I really like jumping spiders, and only through macro photography is that we can really see what they look like.

Photo by Bucweet

I've always been kind of reluctant to placing subjects with their stare to close to the edge of a frame. But this one manages to still have some air to breathe thanks to the metal thingy between the subject and the frame. I really like the storytelling-feeling we get here.

Photo by Preston

Even ordinary things can be extraordinary through photography.

Discussions You May Have Missed

Dorothy had some troubles after a Windows update. I've never had a problem after a Windows update (oh yeah, I had one, the brightness control of my laptop got stuck once) but I always fear everything crashing after one of those famous bi-weekly updates. You might need to read this sad story, and you'll start to be more careful about plugged flash drives or SD cards while shutting down and turning on your computer.

Beth stumbled into a friendly looking moose, yet she shot it with a pretty long lens, a 100mm-400mm. The look on its face is sweet and everything on the frame looks as crisp as it gets.

Robert Apple took us back to the early sci-fi movies with this nice photograph of a beetle. He isn't sure though, about which lens he made the shot, his choices are a vintage Sigma 28mm f1.4 or a 50mm Leica F1.2. I think this was made with the 50mm due to a lack of distortion, but what are your guesses? He also shared some nice stuff on vultures here.

Lynne shared some more flying insect shots, and these are seriously sharp! There is a nice thing about photography, and that is that you can go back and revisit your files and you can either stumble into some things that could surprise you, or maybe you can make wiser post-processing decisions as time goes by.

Chris Pook shared some of his late stuff. These are photographs from a visit to Sinjar in July 2019; the beautiful world and wonderful people as he describes it.

Oh, and we are starting to worry about Craig :), just kidding mate, keep 'em coming!

We'd Love To Hear Your Thoughts

Our beloved Shark Tank is getting pretty sweet as we all Light Stalkers build a solid photography community. This is the right place for all those people that want to grow fast as photographers. This is possible thanks to valuable and positive feedback, which is perhaps the best way in which someone can hack photography's learning curve.

Here you'll get your work critiqued by plenty of great people, but you'll also have the chance of critiquing your peers. We know it is hard for you to believe something like this, but it is actually true. We are able to help you become a better photographer. We truly believe in the power of criticism and feedback, and we promote it via The Tank.

Here many of our members have nurtured their own photographic knowledge by giving out elaborated critiques that go way beyond a simple emoji based reactions or “nice shot” comments. Not to mention the “what camera are you using?” ones. By receiving critiques we can find out flaws that weren't easy to spot for us before hearing an objective opinion upon our work. Here are some of the most interesting shot shared during last week on the Tank:

The Shark Tank is a great place to learn and to discuss, so please read the instructions in order the get a better critique experience. Share your comments, opinions and doubts on any or all of the images above. We also will be delighted to see some of your own images. Don't be shy, critiques are given to photographs and not photographers, so don't be afraid of sharing.

We and many other members will be more than pleased to help you out; after all, we all are in love with photography. Don't skip participating in the newest challenge published by Tersha on Patterns! Please remember to join our friendly photography community if you haven't done already! Take a spin at our Members Picks from this Last Week a well, here you'll find the best of the best from Light Stalking, curated by our very own members.

Today We Leave You With – Reflections

We all love David's work, and this last week he shared three photos of what he is best at, and that is, of course, light painting.

Photo by David Chesterfield

About Author

Federico has a decade of experience in documentary photography, and is a University Professor in photography and research methodology. He's a scientist studying the social uses of photography in contemporary culture who writes about photography and develops documentary projects. Other activities Federico is involved in photography are curation, critique, education, mentoring, outreach and reviews. Get to know him better here.

Much thanks Federico , a great week and top shots from everyone.

Have a great week folks and as ever enjoyed reading Federico 🙂

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