Day 60 - Artsy Parodies

Back in day 1, I showed you a picture of me staring into the distance in front of the Vatican. As I explained, it was a shot that was poking fun at me, and today I'll show you Mr's version. He was a bit confused when I got down on my knees - "You're doing what? Why? Really? And you think that will work? Okay...". He didn't know if he could trust my vision, but I absolutely adore the shot, even though it's not meant to be a serious one.

The whole origin of the "deep, staring into the distance in front of a famous cultural spot" photo joke actually (sort of) originates from my time at the university. You see, we had this new relatively young lecturer who took himself just a tad (ok a lot) too seriously. He was our lecturer in English literature and he would just go on, and on, and on, and ooon about stuff that would take anybody else half a minute to explain. I once (unknowingly) "hijacked" part of one of his lectures by going through the ins and outs of a book we had read - symbolism and all that jazz - which left him without anything to add to the (rather thorough) 10 minute presentation that I made (he had asked me to do it as a part of the mandatory course elements). He ended up ignoring the book in question entirely for the rest of the 3 hour lecture and explaining the other ones we had read to death instead (even more than he usually did)... Oh my... Needless to say, I used to be super bored during his lectures - "okay, I get it already! You don't have to use all the flowery words in the world to describe one concept", you know the type... The ones that make you hate a subject that would have been so much fun in somebody else's hands. It totally turned me off from reading and it took years to for me to enjoy books again. I still hate the idea of so called "fine literature" with a fiery passion. But I digress...

Anyway, all the professors and lecturers were listed on the uni's internet site, and his "official photo" was hilarious. Basically it was him, staring into the distance in front of a famous place in Paris, in black and white with a non-level horizon. Very different from all the other staff pictures - that were quite traditional. It was just like him, ridiculously pretentions in so many ways... and more of a rather embarrassing Facebook profile pic than a professional head shot. After I graduated, I once showed it to a colleague at the office where Mr and I work as we were talking about old uni stuff. She thought it was hilarious, so ever since then it has been our own little inside joke. Every time any of us travel to a famous place, we do a parody shot to poke fun at the concept (and ourselves).

/MrsHjort

Day 18 - Jump!

Here comes another one of those cliché travelling shots. It seems where ever you go where there are cliffs, there are always people willing to jump off them. As we sat down to have our lunch people started chanting "Jump! Jump! Jump!" as this woman stood on the top of one of the cliffs. So out went the camera, and this is the result.

I'm never really happy with these shots when I see them in my computer. If I get the person mid-air, the drama seems lost to me, and if I get them splashing down I think it looks like just another splashy wave. This one is one of the better ones though, since it genuinely looks like she is falling and not just resting on the rock in a funny position haha. Plus, I got her against the darker spot in the rock which made her stand out more. Yey :)

/MrsHjort

Day 13 - The Cliché

Being in this beautiful place I could not help but go wild when the sun neared the horizon. No matter how overdone sunset shot are, I have to confess I'm still a sucker for them. Also, the light here was simply too gorgeous to pass up. The way the sun beamed down trough the mountains was beautiful enough to make you cry... literally in my case haha - I stared into the sun too long as I shot this, and there went the water works. It was totally worth it though :)

/MrsHjort

CCC - January: Thaw

I just realized I haven't been posting any of my Calendar Challenge shots this year. There has been so much going on that I completely forgot - the start-up of Daggerbay (check it out if you haven't already, it's turning out quite awesome :D), work both at the office and home to improve our garden... you know how life can be. Well anyway, here goes, my theme for this year is "Little Details in Nature".

I love doing nature shots, especially closeups, and since I've already done floral shots the other year, I didn't want to repeat myself. There may still be "flowers" in this years, calendar, but I won't be going for the blooming ones. Also having done the last calendar in portrait dimensions, this year I'm flipping format 90 degrees, so all my shots will be in landscape dimensions. And just one more thing; I want all of my shots to reflect the weather somehow - if you've ever met a Swedish person you know that swedes are fascinated by weather haha, but it's not only that. Finding the shots that reflect the weather in some way should also prove an interesting challenge.

January isn't really a colorful month. I wasn't as worried this year as I was back in 2014, since it's far easier to find "little details" than flowers, but the beginning of this year was unusually dull when it came to weather. Thankfully I finally found this little spec of color. It's a bit cliche, I know, but lovely nonetheless.

/MrsHjort

Day 6 - Peony

This is one of those shots that I've been saving for what seems like forever, but never found a use for. One of the reasons is that it's cliche, and therefore I wouldn't want to use it in the regular contests at Dagger Bay (or the like). And, when a cliche contest eventually arrived, this shot was long forgotten... but now it finally gets to see the light of day :).

Isn't that funny though? When you shoot something and think for yourself "I'll keep that one in mind for future use, it's perfect for this or that kind of contest" but then you totally forget? It happens constantly to me. But I guess it's only natural since my archive is now... let me see... it's storing 19 413 pictures!? No wonder stuff get lost! I guess I'll have to create some kind of new filing system for potential contest pictures haha.

/MrsHjort

Wonderful Clichés

Sometimes I can't help myself! Flowers with water drops on them are just so boring, and they have been done millions of times, particularly daisies, but as I saw this in my garden I couldn't help myself! I just had to shoot it! The light hit it just right and the shadowy background made it look like a studio shot, even though it's not, it's really not! It could not be farther from the truth - to shoot this I had to push my tripod to it's limits and place it on some mean mud.

Clichés puzzled me at first, as a virgin hobby photographer, who had just found W1K, the concept was new to me, and it was hard to understand why some of the contests had that restriction. But now, that I've seen more, I find it very wise! Because some things, are just not creative anymore - just like this shot; even though I cannot help but like it I cannot help but think that it's kind of cheep. It's hard so make a flower with droplets on it look bad...

/MrsHjort