Challenge! Cameraderie Photo Challenge #38: Shadows - Winner announced

albertk

Veteran
Start Date
Sep 25, 2020
End Date
Oct 17, 2020
Start Date - September 25, 2020
End Date - October 17, 2020

This Cameraderie 38th Challenge theme is: Shadows.

As usual, this challenge will consider originality, technical merit, and artistic vision.

Everyday we have a world of light and shadow, and it is the shadow that is cast, real or metaphorically, that is the subject this month. The shadow will have a form and structure of its own and from that gets its significance. For you to bring that to the forefront and let us enjoy your interpretation. If you don't have a shadow of doubt your picture is great, show it here! For you to make new icons.

A shadow doubles up for reality, moves around like a mirror-image reflecting real objects and envelops them, encroaches them. In our context, if you are lucky, the picture is the after-image as picture that is left over to share. I'm sure great South American novelists would have had much to say about that netherworld of shadows.

Shadows abstract. Shadows black. Shadows of colours. Shadows with light. Shadows with form. Or without. Shadows casted and shadows painted in the air on smoke or mist. Shadows attached to something. Shadows alone. Shadows moving. Standing. Leaning. Laying. Running. Drinking. Jumping. Anything goes.

Looking for aphorisms I find some great ideas:
- "Like a shadow I am and I am not" ― Rumi [Try to capture that ephemeral world in images . . . Does a shadow have life after all? ]​
- “The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow” ― George R.R. Martin [The fastest lens sees the biggest shadows]​
- “Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream” ― Euripides [Beloved ones are gone forever but hopefully great love is retained in an image]​
- "A dream itself is but a shadow" ― William Shakespeare [And isn't a picture nonetheless made of such a fabric?] Wow, this author knows about the shadows cast . .​
- "We are but dust and shadow” ― Horace [And what is a photo but a reflection of that dust and shadow?]​
- “Has a shadow a name? / ¿Tiene nombre una sombra?” ― Ursula K. Le Guin [ And if yes, then it can be depicted and you can tell us about it]​
- And then there is that cave of Aristoteles where things/concepts and ideas are projected, where the shadows are the dwellers' reality and for outsiders not accurate representations of the real world. [And for whom is the image more true than reality in the form of a picture? For me, personally, these 'shadows' ARE reality, form a world of its own.]​
OK, so much for the fun I have with this . .

Step out of the box. Many years ago two great artists-photographers (among more) took the idea of photography further by letting the shadow of an object directly bring out the subject on a piece of photographic paper: Christian Schad (what a name in this context! his pictures were called Schadographs) and Man Ray (again a great name! his pictures were called Rayogrammes), both working in the sphere of Dada and Surrealism. In our digital era, how can we get such direct results?

Any and all interpretations of a Shadow or of Shadows & Shades of shadow will be allowed, accepted and considered. In black and white. In colour. From film or digital. From camera or phone. Plain or enhanced as 'abstract'.
& If you wish to also include a brief comment or explanation or anything else about your 'Shadow' entry, or how it fits in with the theme of this challenge, please do so.

This challenge will run for a little more than 3 weeks - starting today, September 25, and running through October 17 - Please submit your entry by the end of Saturday, October 17, 2020. I will do my best to evaluate and judge in a timely fashion after that.

So, so much for now . . . show us your shadows!
Albert
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No change to the tried and trusted rules, which are as follows:

1. Either take pictures that match the nominated theme or select some from your portfolio. You must be the photographer that created the images in order to enter it.

2. Only one entry per challenge, please. If you want to withdraw an entry and replace it with another, that is OK, but you must make it clear in the post containing your replacement pictures that this is what you've done. You can add or change the title and add to the edit line to let everyone know.

3. The decision of the curator at the end of the challenge is final - don't give him/her a hard time about it: this is just a friendly photo-challenge, after all!

4. The winner will assume the responsibility of curator for the next Challenge, and as soon as possible post a message in a new thread in the Cameraderie Photo Challenges forum, with details of the new theme. Don't forget - that opening message must include a copy of these instructions, which also double as the rules.

5. The curator cannot enter in his or her own challenge.
 
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Carl Jung asked: "How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole”
My entry is simply a photograph of my shadow, taken across a newly-mown hay field, at sunset - with an old Lumix GX-1 camera that was converted to infrared.

PhotographerShadow-Fortepan.jpg
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Four days to go - the date casts its shadow already.
So all who have not posted - show some inspiration for us all.

So . .


And here some play with long long winter shadows that I very probably can do in Switserland like every year beginning February, we have booked already, but there will by all chances still be travel rstrictions in Europe at that time, so as such it is a bit sad sad sobbing:

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For special purpose only . .
 
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Winner announced, the curator has spoken:

Thanks to all of you. There were great contributions. It is a subject that is seemingly simple but such simple subjects demand a lot of expression and depth.

So here are my thoughts, in the order of appearance:

Emerson. Your two chairs that thanks to their shadows transform into larger entities. I like the framing with the lines of the window sill creating a nice composition. And the red chair really jumps out from the background. Is it in an airport? It is large. Really large. Then the chairs provide a great place to sit and dream.

MiguelATF. Your shadows show a lot of innovation,: doing things in another way. It is great how you , by using an IR-converted camera still are able to depict a normal grey-value scene, a real ‘nuit Americain’ as the French movie makers call it. Such a picture looks like it is a moon-lit scene. I like the dark side of you, but when I look closer I also see an imperceptible halo along the place where the head is, from the reflections of the low sun in some dew on the grass [No, this is not a joke, such things do happen in early morning lighting]. It is innovative, has a high quality image and is expressive. ¿Tiene nombre una sombra? Ah, it is Miguel himself!

daveCT01. Your picture, with I guess it is a woman who reaches out at a fluorescent lamp, is an enigma. I like that. Also the size contributes. Things are not clear. [And I did not ask to share a larger image. . ] And that epithet Google , it makes it all the more mysterious. Also the monochromatic green color creates suspense. It is not just a wrong color temperature. To me it could convey a lot of things, having to do with reaching out at knowledge / information / insight / light on a subject [=googling], and the anxiety which is expressed by the framing, depiction, color and composition. Great.

donlaw. When I looked up ‘shadows’ as pictures (that is, googled, what else exists to shed some light?) , pictures and compositions like yours were shown on top. They are the most popular. Not the easiest to make. This looks like a simple picture but let’s start at the horizon. There are two. There are two vantage points in the image, two roads to the far distance, not parallel. All those space-dividers and the subtle guiding from the fence lines. The slight movement of the concrete floor. The regular ceiling without a sag. A strange and absurd space. Where have all the people gone? Which road have they taken?

drd1135. Your bike-tire has a beautiful composition to it with the ellipse from the tire and the curb stones that form a composition element. Once you start at the picture from ‘the curb up’ it gets more and more exiting. It is an extreme WA shot I guess and still the bicycle doesn’t care a lot about that. So my eye dwells from left to right, from back to forth. I think that is a very nice quality in a picture.

theoldsmithy. Aliens. Definitely. And they have returned after some catastrophic events that only some tumble weed was able to survive. They told us to be careful. We again, weren’t. Here the story goes on. The hands of the woman on the right are very expressive, stretched out this way. It reminds me of paintings on murals from castles and towns in old Persia. Cities long time disappeared. Civilizations gone. The image of king and queen left over in some mosaics, standing just like this, the hands stretched out through time. Only some curse was left. So. Here they are again, after 5.000 years. And remember the halo in Miguel’s picture? Here you see the same. It is the sign of kings and queens.

serhan. Waiting in Washington, DC. The picture shows the DC metro-platform. But it is unclear where the platform really ends. We see people standing on the left, but I see no passengers yet approaching the doors on the right, those doors also do not open. The lighting, that is part of the [new] platform I see, casts a terrible shadow on the metro car. There is no demarcation at all. The ceiling wraps it all up and from the other platform on the right it pushes the car against the platform on our side. Mysteries, and a great play of light and shadow.

pdurand. This looks like a crucifix and I have seen zillions of them in my life. But there are a few things that I observe. There is no wood, no cross, except that as framed by the shadow. Has the figurine just started to elevate? So is there salvation? The ‘material’ as chosen by the artist is different from normal, she took iron. Electric welding. Wires stick out of the surface. Like cuts of finger nails protruding from an wooden statue. In short, it reminds me of a African sculpture, a VooDoo ritual doll. And then again, the lighting faintly shows the contour of a face, a nose, eyebrows, a chin and hair. In fact, I see this as a great picture of a great piece of art.

Leeland Williams. Surfers and an onlooker in a wax coat. The man with the cap in the hand. The stance of the lady with the arm in her side, looking at the surf and the Big Sur that lays somewhere out there as a promise. The man, with his muscled poise, taxing the scene too. And I like the reflections of them both in the wet sand that all at once bring the group in the background into the picture. So in all, a nice picture with a long story.

pictogramax. A lady sitting on a bench in a park, a roman on het knees and just having had a little buff from a cigarette. Gorgeous lighting of the scene. The flies that are there too to emphasize the sitter. Indeed, a classic chiaroscuro. I love the lining from the bench, the slight dent due to the weight from the lady and the parallel lines of the light on the foreground. This makes it into a slight baroque space divider. Yes. This is Art.

So we see deep passes.

ricks. Now what is going on here? Where is my reference point? I guess we have a door at the bottom and a ceiling in the rest of the picture. But what is it made of? There are several structural elements that compete for attention. First of all, the divider from wall to ceiling, a straight line, very sharp. And we see something of light falling through window panes. But what are all those minute swirls? Are they part of the pattern of the window glass? No, because foliage is depicted evenly. Is it a reflection from a pond that reflects the sun apparently from the netherworld? I have never seen ceilings and walls painted in such swirls. [Save for some experiments from the German Romantic era when poets liked such ‘pictures’ in dominant and radiating blue/red/purple around them. But. Even after looking and reviewing the picture, I am still not certain how this is done. It is a great picture. Imagine it hanging on a gally wall. With people lining up to dwell there for some time.

pdk4. The impression of a penguin. No really, a penguin in the stance moving on the ice. I think backward. Because of the way the head is inclined and the way the hands hold out to the side. I see a subtle play in the lines that sort of end in the position of the skates. The overall shadow is light blue suggesting a picture at the end of day, with a clear blue sky, in a skate ring (no natural ice would be so perfect). In all, a nice picture of concentration and feeling such an achievement in skating.

Matero. I see an arcade beneath a football stadium, and reading the signs (VIP-Bereiche) it must be somewhere in Germany. I like the repetition of the wall elements, the light fixtures (a tinge of design of the 1930’s). I like the way the shadows bend along the corner of the stadium. Then all at once there is this shadow of a person standing, the head slightly bowed. Is this the stage to a new episode of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung? Could be. Great picture.

So now I face the difficult task of selecting the winner! I have seen some very good contributions to the challenge. Indeed, some deep passes at the subject as drd1135, the Zen Snapshooter, said. :friends:Mastery not just in abstract photography but also in conveying some deeper feelings. And expressing certain thoughts and ideas. Even when I try to evocate them on paper in my own subjective angle and interpretation.

Some pictures do indeed form a universe by themselves, please the eye, show dreams recurring and have shadows that express the shadow of time and space. And these are trying times.

Therefore, I declare davect01 the winner. :drinks: His picture with the enigma of searching where the light is has so many layers of connotation that I think he is a worthy new ‘challenger’.
Congratulations, Dave!
 
Congrats Dave! Excellent image. And very cool challenge. Thank you akuiper for the excellent comment on the submissions. It takes time and effort and it is appreciated.
 
Thanks donlaw. I had time to think about it as things developed. & I have been trained to write such prose and have a freestyle. Having for real been a curator. [But then I went into consulting . . ]
 
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