Staff

This month’s Picture This! assignment was the “Power of B&W” and we were thrilled by the many and varied images we received. Clearly there is a love and appreciation of monochrome photography, and we saw images that ranged from portraits to abstracts to intense studies of line, form, and tonality. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of black and white is the ability to interpret the image through contrast and tonal manipulations (even constrained HDR) without verging into the kinds of tricks to which color seems more prone, all while maintaining a certain photographic “credibility.”

This month’s Picture This! assignment was Still & Motion, the premise being that photography can capture what the naked eye can’t see—motion within a “still” image. Steady hands or a tripod, a slow shutter speed, and a sense of visual juxtaposition were key. It’s all about the physics that only a camera can reveal. Readers sent in a wide variety of images ranging from cityscapes to sports to a casual passing of a moving subject, all showing us an abstraction of our usual perception of time and space.

Ian Coble had purchased a waterproof housing for his camera earlier in the summer, and after a photo trip to Hawaii wanted to get back into the water for more shooting. So he called his friend Ben Rhodea, an expert stand-up paddleboarder, and they met up at nearby Elliott Bay, outside Seattle, Washington.

Our Picture This! assignment this month was Stacking, the lingo used to describe the optical effect that makes subjects at some distance from one another seem closely packed together through the use of a telephoto lens. But given the right point of view and arrangement of forms, some readers also sent us successful shots taken with “normal” focal lengths as well. We received a wide range of subjects, from ancient towns to nature studies, all with apt points of view and good application of technique. It all goes to show us that there are simply some images that can’t be mocked up after the fact and that there remain many ways to create an effective image in camera via composition, the proper lens, and a good understanding of exposure control. In that we can all still take heart.