Capture Moments: My Journey with 52 Frames (22/44)

52 Frames is a photograpic community that promotes an online weekly pohotgraphy challenge. Each week a theme is selected and you have 7 days to shoot and send one picture based on that weekly theme. A jury selects 3 weekly winners and then 52 honorable mentions are awarded each week. On top of that, your picture will receive comments from other users and so on and so forth just like many other photgrapher’s communities on the net.

For me, participating in this challenge has nothing to do with pleasing or getting pleased with nominations, positive comments, or critiques. I am doing this to oblige myself to take a few moments each week to study, shoot, and then develop a picture. The theme-thing makes this endeavor more focused by narrowing the number of possibilities. A few times, I had to study a new technique, like the shot with a flying Marta in our garden in Ossett, which at first was a kind of nuisance, and it ended up being great fun! My way of interpreting all this is to transform the challenge into a project and to capture some of the backstage thoughts using these pages on my website.

As of the 3rd of January, I am in week 39 – 39 consecutive weekly pictures sent, and I am committed to completing the first 52 weeks and updating this page regularly! Will I make it or fail? Will I start a Year 2 project? Time will tell!!

1. Week 15-’24 – Technology – 14 April 2024

I created an alien environment using my laptop (Dell-Alienware brand, very inspiring!), two security cameras, and a smartphone. For the lighting I used my SmallRig kit positioned to the right and transformed one of our bedrooms into my photography studio. The smoke is 100% post-pro using Luminar Neo. I never applied that smoke effect, and I was pleased to see how it could make the back of the laptop disappear and leave only the tiny alien face, which is the logo of Alienware.

I don’t value my creative skills too much, and it was a big surprise that I could come up with this idea… A good reason to practice the weekly challenge.

2. Week 16-’24 – Anthropomorphism – 21 April 2024

This shot is easier than the previous one. It uses all-natural light and a wide aperture. For the post-production, I focused on getting nice, warm colors, with the red of the heart popping out. Nothing more than that. Oh yes, the most challenging thing: waiting for a sunny day in Yorkshire!

3. Week 17-’24 – Leading Lines – 27 April 2024

For the ‘Leading Lines’ shot scheduled for the last week in April, I was about to miss the weekly shot and restart from zero. We were returning from a one-week business trip and we were travelling to Nepal. There was just no way to prepare a shot, develop and post it. Go figure out if I could do all this and also follow the weekly theme. But when all the hopes were gone, once I was at Manchester airport, I saw this funny ‘seater’ just doing the job. I grabbed my mobile phone, quick black and white post pro and the submission was done in a matter of seconds! Too easy.

4. Week 18-’24 – Something I made-04 May 2024

Just arrived in Chitwan, Nepal after a 9 hours transfer from Kathmandu. By car. This is another case when I just wanted to give up the challenge. There was just nothing that ‘I had made’ except a big mess trying to connect batteries, cameras, PCs… Sometimes, that’s all you have to do: embrace imprefection and let it go: nothing to write home about but, hey, sowthing to have fun with! That’s what this picture, and this project, is all about!

5. Week 19-’24 – Wide Aperture-07 May 2024

Wide aperture is an easy theme for me. Like may, I soon fell prey of the aperture trap and the compulsion to buy fast primes. An easy theme, this is what I thought. That week in May we were in Nepal and although it would have been easy just to shoot wide open, I was not happy until I conceived a photo with the ‘wide aperture’ as the subject or, to put it in a better way, a picture that could only work if taken wide open. Not a master piece, for sure, but dreamy soft and mellow image of an early moning in Nepal.

6. Week 20-’24 – Reflexion-18 May 2024

We are back to the UK and to take this picture we chose again the beatuy of the Yorkshire nature. When it does not rain. Shot with a long lens, this swan dwells the calm waters of the canal in Savile town, near Dewsbury.

7. Week 21-’24 – Details-25 May 2024

Returning back from Nepal, finding inspiration for the week was not hard. In this case the protagonist is the detail on Ganesh statuette. When the theme is easy, like this one, and I have some time, I am compelled in making a picture that is strongly bound to the theme itself. In this case, without those details, it would have been just an elephant.

8. Week 22-’24 – Shot with a phone-25 May 2024

Augusta is the protagonist of the week. The theme is wide, too wide for me so, I ended up a few hours ahead of the deadline. Lovely subject, mediocre shot.

9. Week 23-’24 -Line from a song -09 June 2024

Line from a song means: shoot a picture inspired by a verse of a song. This is a project that I would love to do and will surely do sometimes in the future. 52 Frames has offered me this opportunity to make this exercise and transform it into great fun. At that time I was listening to Chinatown by Bleachers. The line that I chose is:

‘But a girl like you
Could rip me out of my head
Black tears on your cheek
I want them in my bed
I’ll take you out of the city
Honey, right into the shadow
Because I wanna find tomorrow
Yeah, I wanna find tomorrow ‘

Some postpro and a single light with SmallRig got me the job done.

11. Week 24-’24 – Abstract -14 June 2024

Not my genre, so I tryied to minimize the collateral damages and get a shot just in time before the deadline. Long exposure of my laptop’s keyboard – a small movement and the abstract effect is served.

12. Week 25-’24 – Portrtait -21 June 2024

The magic of the Sony 50mm f1.2, hair, eyes, and shirt colors matching that could come from a master photographer (and in my case, was only due to master luck), and an evening at the pub offered the perfect subject for this week’s theme with the additional challenge ‘Portrait of a Stranger’ perfectly executed. Or at least, as perfectly as I could!!

13. Week 26-’24 – Negative space -30 June 2024

Negative space means having the subject cover a relatively small part of the picture. Although this is a foundation of the photographic technique, I have not thought enough about how mastering negative space more often emphasizes the subjects of my pictures. Good lesson learned.

14. Week 27-’24 – Triangular composition -06 July 2024

Leeds is a young, beautiful city: It’s not rare to meet top models and VIPs while walking through its streets. This was my case when I visited the city center on an early July weekend. I chose to frame the model to highlight the shape of the trousers and the quirky bag. Just one shot and I felt like a fashion photographer – next life, that’s what I will be!

15. Week 28-’24 – Spoon -14 July 2024

Yes, this week’s theme was fun – the idea to make the spoon become something else and the challenge of taking a picture that was neat and polished kept me busy for a while and I was happy with the end result.

16. Week 29-’24 – Shape with light – 14 July 2024

Lately, hydrangeas have often been the protagonists of my pictures. We should not try to look for hidden meaning: the reason is that there is a wonderful plant in front of out house – unvaluable help when I am in search of a model to pose for me! This is the case: just a touch of light from the left and… here we go!

17 Week 30-’24 – Water – 26 July 2024

I was traveling back to Italy for work and had literally a few minutes to take a shot at ‘Water.’ I spent more hours in airports and hotel lobbies than close to rivers or on a beach, so… this is my take for this week!

18 Week 31-’24 – Distortion – 04 Aug 2024

August: the month when all of Italy (and most Italians) is on holiday. And we are no exception this year! 52 Frames assignment is not an easy one: Distortion. We are in Follonica, sunny, hot and crowded like always. Several years ago a local photographer organized a photographic exhibition based on the reflections of houses and monuments of Follonica taken from cars. I found that idea spectacular and I always remembered it as an example of creativity. Distortion is a tribute to this photographer and a memory of August 2024 in Follonica.

19 Week 32-’24 – Night Photography – 12 Aug 2024

It’s already time to go back to the UK – holidays are always so short! Tonight’s photo is special as we kiss our home goodbye, see you in 6 months and … wait a minute, why is the motorbike in the living room anyway?…

I like the different narrative planes of this picture: the shapes defined by the dim light coming from the street as we get ready to step out of our house. This process has become routine after more than 10 years now, but it still has a lot of emotional meaning to us.

20 Week 33-’24 – Door – 19 Aug 2024

So familiar that it means home!

21 Week 34-’24 – Rule of Odds- 24 Aug 2024

The rule of odds in photography is well-known and a classic photo-club assignment. I must confess that I never paid too much attention to it. My bad. This is one of the positive aspects of the project with 52 Frames – push outside the ‘same-old same-old’ and try something different.

In this case, we were in Chester, a lovely little town object of our attention for a weekend away from Ossett. The parallel with the ‘Tre Archi’ in Massa Marittima was immediate and I could only take the shot and call it a (photography) day!

22 Week 35-’24 – Rule of Thirds- 01 Sept 2024

Another rule this week -this time I felt that the boundaries were too wide, and I felt lost as I could not decide what to use as a subject. I went for a semi-studio shot with the small-rig light that is so fun to use together with a super wide prime. Not the best shot, but hey! This is what a 52-weeks project is about!

I will be updating this page with more pictures VERY SOON!!