Phoneography and Non-SLR Digital Devices Photo Challenge: Macro (Topography of Seasonings) + (Going on Holiday)

14 April 2014

Lens:

Part One: Indian Spices

1. Indian Spices, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

2. Indian Spices, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

3. Turmeric, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

4. Indian Spices, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

Part Two: Table Salt

5. Table Salt, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

6. Table Salt, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

7. Table Salt, iPhone 4s, April 2014; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2014

Let me know which you prefer and why.

Pens:

Typically, early summer and autumn are my ideal travel seasons. But our winter was stacked with day-after-day of grey and wet, forcing the synapses to ponder other destinations. My mind was focused more on pilgrimages than shoveling snow and layering to keep warm.

My wanderlust was climbing to its peak performance. Now I’m a few days from a journey that will combine family, friends and adventure. Descriptors keep bouncing in my head: explore, play, savor, contemplate, float, meditate, watch, listen, GRATEFUL. And allow serendipity and spontaneity to rule.

This post is the last one for April. I will return on Monday, 05 May, to serve up my enthusiasm for this blogging life. Mostly, I want to thank all of you for your readership and support. I’ll miss you, but will be back with lens and pens for your perusal.

Macro week always conjures the chance to visualize a morsel of our universe. Mostly, to represent it differently than its usual context. Macro photography takes the viewer to a brand new place—a place of sizable dimensionality, not in heft but in content.

Macro is a walk through a plot to catch the audience by surprise. It’s a story that visually tantalizes with unexpected splendor in the miniscule. But small does not always aim to please. Truly, it’s a challenger’s challenge.

With my eye to my excursion I wanted to connect this post to my holiday. Topography as the theme seems appropriate. My thoughts turned to my garden and then moved to spices.

In the Lens section are seven images that are divided into two sections: Indian spices and table salt. Whether crystalline or blurred the images evoke the earth’s multi-faceted terrains: a view to landscapes seen from above or ground level.

For me these images simulate the wild with pristine and uninhabited (at least by the human animal) fields of plenty, which are uncultivated arrangements of nature. Some of the images show ground swells and elevations, flats and hills, density and sparsity.

Topography studies surface features that examine the relationship between the sum of the parts. In aerial views, for example, natural elements seem world’s apart from their above-ground archaeology.

While my photographs conjure the land and its contours, forms and shapes, in reality they are seasonings that come from my kitchen shelves. How easily we can be fooled by the visual: our minds interpreting a scene or object based on knowledge or memory. Those differences between what we think and what we actually see can be influenced by depth of field and perspective, editing and processing, and size. In this instance, what the mind doesn’t know can be as persuasive as what it knows.

Until we meet again on Monday, 05 May. Enjoy your next two weeks of summer, winter, spring or autumn–depending on your worldwide location. Here spring will have advanced and I will return to mega gardening tasks, which will give me much time to cultivate the memories built on holiday.

[If you anticipate entering this week’s challenge, please get your post to me by Wednesday.]  

Tip of the Week:

Marcus Nilsson’s aesthetic portraits of culinary designs are so enticing as to mesmerize our visual senses. There are many, many food photographers who adequately document plating and styling of the culinary arts, but Nilsson’s work stands far above the majority of commercial and professional photographers. When I gaze upon his presentations, I am reminded of the modernist architects who use creative, crisp, sensual and sumptuous narratives to tell their stories. Nilsson’s work can be seen, for example, in cookbooks such Bon Appetit’s Cook Like a Pro, 2014. Please take some time to discover and enjoy his art. Click here.

Bon Appetit’s “Cook Like a Pro (2014). Photographs by Marcus Nilsson

Other entries for this week’s challenge:

http://pictograf.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/phoneography-challenge-macro-2/

http://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/phoneography-and-non-slr-digital-devices-photo-challenge-macro-up-close-in-the-kitchen/

http://completelydisappear.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/hello-stranger/

http://angelinem.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/phoneography-challenge-macro-under-water/

http://piecesofstarlight.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/phoneography-topography-of-sweet-opportunities-to-hop/

http://decocraftsdigicrafts.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/phoneography-challenge-macro/

http://steve-says.net/2014/04/14/hit-the-road-jack/

http://helpalongthepath.com/2014/04/14/ants-phoneography-and-non-slr-digital-devices-photo-challenge/

http://firebonnet.com/2014/04/14/l-phoneography-a-mushroom-cap-labyrinth/

http://passionatelybored.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/phoneography-and-non-slr-digital-devices-photo-challenge-macro/

http://nwframeofmind.com/2014/04/14/iphoneography-monday-4-14-14/

http://19planets.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/bamboo-spring-007-april-2014-haigahaibun-phoneography-challenge-macro-plus-napowrimo/

http://livingwithmyancestors.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/phoneography-and-non-slr-digital-devices-photo-challenge-macro/

http://artifactsandfictions.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/early-morning/

http://shareandconnect.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/phoneography-and-non-slr-digital-devices-photo-challenge-macro/

http://blogagaini.com/2014/04/15/macro-ranunculus-bud/

http://uniquesochic.com/2014/04/16/cherry-tree-awakens-new-buds/

http://zimmerbitch.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/a-micro-macro-universe/

http://wisnuwidiarta.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/phoneography-and-non-slr-digital-devices-photo-challenge-macro-sea-stuffs/

Note: As always I welcome any comment about this post or any part of my blog.

If you’d like to join the fun, please click here for details. If you have any questions about the Photo Challenge, please contact me.

Below is a reminder of the monthly schedule with themes for upcoming Photo Challenges:

1st Monday: Nature

2nd Monday: Macro

3rd Monday: Black and White

4th Monday Challenger’s Choice (Pick One: Abstraction, Animals, Architecture, Food Photography, Night Photography, Objects, Portraiture, Still Life, Street Photography, and Travel). (Animals and Objects are themes.)

5th Monday: Editing and Processing with Various Apps Using Themes from the Fourth Week.

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