jude’s photo challenge: textures

My dear fellow bloggers:  I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to concentrate on blogging (or much of anything) with all that’s happening in the world around us; there is too much uncertainty swirling about.  But I hope we can maintain some degree of tranquility and sanity by continuing to do the things we love best: reaching out to each other in our blogging world, loving and encouraging each other, and appreciating the struggles each of us is going through.  We can choose to either hole up in our houses and go into hibernation (or worse, depression), or continue to make an effort to reach out while staying physically isolated.  Peace and hugs to all of you out there.

That being said, as I try my best to keep the faith, here is my take on Jude’s photo challenge for this month.  It’s all about textures.

This month we are going to look at textures. While the structure of an object is its form, the material from which it is made constitutes its texture. Is it hard or soft, smooth or rough?  You are aiming at translating texture visually, bringing life and energy to a photo through shape, tone and colour. Study the texture and forget about the object. Texture becomes the subject here.

1. Find something smooth and get in close (see my post: tiffany glass: painting with color and light)
2. Find something rough and get in close. Try contrasting a rough texture against a smooth texture (2020 Photo Challenge #10).

Here I’ve juxtaposed rough and smooth (well, somewhat smooth).  In the second photo, I’ve zoomed in to the rough texture.

rough and smooth

rough texture up close

3. Play with angles. This might mean getting down on your stomach to shoot upwards. Or zoom in to focus on the texture and not the subject itself (2020 Photo Challenge #11).

sunflower at McKee-Beshers in Maryland

sunflower at McKee-Beshers in Maryland

4. Try to mix your texture with other colors and patterns.

Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati

Meadowlark Botanical Gardens

mixing textures and patterns

log cabin at sunflower at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens

Meadowlark Botanical Gardens

5. Get close to your subject and capture just the texture itself, without the context. Then zoom out so that you capture both the context of the texture as well as the texture itself.

zoom in – Shenandoah National Park

zoom out – Shenandoah National Park

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zoom in – Longji Rice Terraces, China

zoom out – Longji Rice Terraces, China

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zoom in – Shofuso Japanese House and Gardens

zoom out – Shofuso Japanese House and Gardens

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zoom in – gnarly tree trunk

zoom out – gnarly tree trunk

Thanks to Jude for hosting this challenge. 🙂

Everyone, please keep yourselves safe out there, and remember to appreciate and thank all the people you meet in the service, grocery, and health industries who are providing your food, drinks, pharmaceuticals, health care and other necessities!  Peace to you all. 🙂

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“PHOTOGRAPHY” INVITATION:  I invite you to create a photography intention and then create a blog post for a place you have visited. Alternately, you can post a thematic post about a place, photos of whatever you discovered that set your heart afire. You can also do a thematic post of something you have found throughout all your travels: churches, doors, people reading, people hiking, mountains, patterns, all black & white, whatever!

In this case, I am participating in Jude’s photo challenge on textures found here:

1. 2020 Photo Challenge #9: March’s theme / technique: Being Creative with Texture

You probably have your own ideas about this, but in case you’d like some ideas, you can visit my page: photography inspiration.

I challenge you to post no more than 20-25 photos and to write less than 1,500 words about any travel-related photography intention you set for yourself. Include the link in the comments below by Wednesday, April 1 at 1:00 p.m. EST.  When I write my post in response to this challenge on Thursday, April 2, I’ll include your links in that post.

This will be an ongoing invitation, every first, second, and third (& 5th, if there is one) Thursday of each month. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂

I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!