I'm a Copy Cat Challenge Winner!

I've been participating in a weekly Copy Cat challenge online as a member of ILovePhotography.com where another photographer posts a picture that we are supposed to copy.  We're supposed to take note of lighting, framing, composition, and all other photographic aspects of the picture to try to replicate the image ourselves as closely as possible.  At the end of the week a winner is announced and I was thrilled to find out today that my picture won!  I unfortunately can't post the image I was trying to duplicate because of copyrights, but here is my image.  What a fun challenge!  I look forward to these every week!

Project 365: Texture

Texture was a fun theme this week--a little challenging at the beginning, but definitely fun.  This was another one of those weeks where I wish I had a nice macro lens. I took more pictures on the theme this week than I normally do, but here are my favorites I chose for the forum.

 

Some Copy Cat Challenge Favorites

I normally don't post my Copy Cat Challenge pictures where we try to imitate a specific image that another photographer posts for us, but this week's challenge was so fun I just wanted to share some of my favorite shots.

Project 365: Upside-Down

This week's theme has been quite challenging.  It's been hard to think outside the box and get a little more creative.  Of course the week started out with a few upside-down children, then some upside-down objects, and finally a little more creativity on the last day, although similar ideas were also presented on the forums this week. 

Project 365: Eyes

This was a fun challenge for the week.  At first I found that I couldn't quite get the focus right on the eye--it would usually fall to the eyelashes instead.  So I practiced a lot this week and finally nailed the focus--in most cases by closing down my aperture a little more.  It was particularly difficult to get the focus right where I wanted it in the pictures of myself, since I was actually taking those pictures just hand-holding my camera.  You can even look closely and see in the catchlights the image of my arms holding out my camera with its strap dangling as I actually snapped the picture.  It's always fun to look in the catchlights of eyes and see what else you can learn about the room and what was going on during that picture.  Some of these shots are especially fun because the eyes show so much emotion like in the kids' pictures.  This was definitely a fun week.  I got so many good pictures that I really loved and wish I could share more, but here are the ones I posted on ILP for the challenge.

Nieces {Children}

My brother's family came to visit a couple weeks ago, so I had fun curling my nieces hair and taking pictures of them, of course.  What gorgeous girls!  These two were my favorite.