Philippians 3:13-14 VersePic: Meditation (June 15-23)

[Benjamin Holmes]

Good Evening Lenspiration!

This week, we need photos to backdrop Philippians 3:13-14.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

This week, I’d like to do something interesting. A challenge if you will. Every time I come to design a VersePic, I look at a verse and search it until I find a way to represent the way I feel about this verse visibly. Sometimes, it’s simple and the answer is obvious, and at other times I really have to think about it for a long time before I can decide on an idea. What does this have to do with a challenge you ask? Well, this week, that’s what I want YOU to do! Instead of giving you something I want you to shoot at or a specific idea, I want you to meditate on this verse and really think about the applications you can make from it into your own life, and THEN decide on what you would like to photograph to represent how you feel about it. This is something I have to do all the time, and it is both a great exercise in general for Photographers and Graphic Designers (how do I represent my idea visually?), but also for as Christians. (How can I share my feelings about this spiritual idea with others?) Additionally, I’d love for you to post your reasons for why you chose the subject you did. What about the verse or the application made you think of what you did?

To make things more difficult (or much easier, depending on how you look at it!), please ONLY photograph ONE subject. If you are shooting a landscape, that would be one subject, but if you are staging a “studio” shoot, please keep your composition clean without distracting elements from the main subject.

Full details on submission rules, what the images will be used for, the DFR link and everything else can be found here. Please remember to submit your RAW or DNG files via the DFR link!

I can’t wait to see what you all are going to come up with!
Ben
Sharpening Character’s VersePic Director

RECAP:
Request: A photo to backdrop Philippians 3:13-14
Photo ideas: VERSE CHALLENGE!
Deadline: Friday the 23rd at Midnight

• This topic was modified 54 years, 9 months ago by .

[Caitlin Compton]

Hi Ben!

I just wanted to clarify something! 🙂 Are we only allowed to submit one image or were you meaning to only have one subject in each picture?

Thanks Caitlin

[Benjamin Holmes]

@creative-click-photography

You can absolutely submit as many photos as you like! Please just keep the composition simple with one subject if you are shooting indoors or in a studio environment.

Thanks!

[Caitlin Compton]

Thanks Ben. I just wanted to double check! 🙂

Here are the pictures I came up with! It was such a fun challenge having to think about the verse and come up with the ideas!! 🙂

I think most of the pictures are pretty self-exploratory of the idea behind them, but I’ll just briefly outline it here!

– #1. The person is walking – pressing on. I hope the sneakers (being a practical walking shoe) give a feel of being serious about pressing for the mark.

– #2. The girl is running – again I was going for the idea of pressing towards the mark.

– #3. I wanted the hand to look as though it was “reaching forth unto those things which are before.”

– #4. and #5. I wanted the girl to look surrendered to God. Serious about her faith. Marvelling over the greatness of God. (“I count not myself to have apprehended”) Asking God for help to reach the mark. Plus her hands are reaching. I have two different angles for this one. I love the light in #4, but I thought that there might have been more room for the verse in #5.

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[Kimberly Snyder]

Submitting this picture as per James’s suggestion. 🙂

I hadn’t realized it before he said, but the picture does portray a kind of hope and brighter future, which is probably the most impacting part of Philippians 3:13-14, to me.

Blessings!

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[Benjamin Holmes]

@creative-click-photography @daughterofhim97
Too bad I didn’t see that photo in time Kimberly! One problem that immediately jumps out at me is that you submitted a photo with a watermark. I much prefer if you submit photos without any type of destructive edits, as that makes my job a little easier!

Now to reveal the newest VersePic and the winner of the VPO!

Congradulations Caitlin! If you could please email me at [email protected] I’ll get your $5 reward off to you ASAP! You know, I really need to keep a list of the emails of winners so I don’t have to ask every time. 🙂

First, thank GOODNESS Caitlin submitted a DNG file via the DFR in addition to the JPEG on the forum! As you can see here, a “flat” JPEG file completely looses the highlights. The DNG file, however, had all of the highlight information and I was able to completely recover them! The many benifits of shooting in RAW… 😉

Before I get into the critique, I just want to say that I’m being honest here, and I may at times tend to be brutally so. Please take this critique in the way it was intended: to help you grow as a photographer!

Critique wise, one thing I like very much was how you figured out your shot. The small aperture in combination with having one foot in focus and close to the viewer gives a great illusion of depth and distance that I loved, and it provided the perfect out-of-focus non-distracting canvas for then verses! Additionally you perfectly captured all the detail in your DNG file with nothing blown out. This is something I constantly aim for. I can do a ridiculous amount in software adding and removing light and color from an image, but I can’t add that detail. You did a great job on that! Honestly I can’t think of anything else that I can say about the photo other than that I appreciated how you were able to explain why you took the photo, and that clarity of thought in the photo’s “story” comes through in the finished product.

As for your other photos Caitlin, I’ll be honest and say I had some difficulties opening the B&W photo of the girl running, so I’m completely going on the JPEG Preview embedded in the RAW file. First, I don’t see the Black and white doing anything for the image. You need to either have a significant color problem in your photo to remove all color or know that removing the color makes your photo look a lot better than in color. As I can’t see the original image, I’ll give you a pass on a lot of the issues here. Just to name a few of them: your black point is significantly higher than it should be, leading to some real issues with the hair and skirt becoming just a solid black. One other issue I draw is going to be personal preference, but the model (siblings are so useful!) feels… posed. To put it one way, it looks as if she isn’t moving. Her stance and arm placement in addition to the fact that none of her is blurred in motion makes me feel that if she is moving, she’s moving very slowly… Again, personal preference. I know people run like that, it’s just that you set up the shot to suggest movement, and the model doesn’t really mirror that, at least to me. A longer shutter speed to allow for some blur I feel would go a long way in enhancing the image.

One last critique, this time on the photos of your sister kneeling. The issue I find here is that of your composition and the angle you chose to shoot from. The problem comes from the fact that everything is off centered in these shots, and I can’t find a reason to justify why you did that. Your sister’s arms and body provide leading lines pointed at the sky, but when you follow those lines and look at the sky, the light source isn’t placed at the end of those lines. (You can really tell when I recover the highlights in the RAW files) This happens in both of your angles, and if you had taken your photos at a slightly different angle and placed your sister in the center of the shot, lining up the everything, it would go a long way to clarify what the photo is about, at least for me!

Abby, you submitted an interesting photo of your brother running at the sea. The advice I would offer you is to ALWAYS have a reason for your choices in your composition, and the composition is really the issue that I would point to in this shot. When your subject is in motion, the eye wants to see where it’s going, so we usually want to place the subject on one side of the photo and frame the shot so you have room for the subject to “move into”. You placed the subject right in the middle, and which left me a little confused as to whether I was supposed to look at the sea or the object in motion. Nothing is really happening in the right side of the photo, so it’s a distraction from your subject. You can fix this after the fact in software and even on you camera now, but your composition is something we all should be thinking about before we take a photo. I know I’m very guilty of this photography sin, so I’m preaching to myself here! Always think about your composition Ben!!! 🙂 Additionally, I don’t see the sky and horizon doing anything for the photo, so you could have completely ignored that they were there! By focusing on where your subject is going, you help the viewer understand what is happening. Usually. Sometimes breaking the “rules” of photography can create something really cool, so always pay attention to the rules, but know that you can break them. Sorry, I can get caught up in preaching to myself! 😉

I was excited to see someone new submit photos! I hope you continue to participate in the VersePic Opportunities Hannah Jones! First, thank you for submitting uncompressed NEF files via the DFR! I really appreciate it when people do that. I’ll be honest and just say that your photos weren’t quite what I was looking for, and I didn’t really find a way that I could see the verses in some of the photos… The sunset you submitted I felt was perfectly framed by the trees on the right, but the framing was disrupted on the left by the tree there. This isn’t a problem, and I’d probably just crop out everything to left of the tree to keep the framing consistent. The one problem I do have is that I tried cropping, but the tree is leaning toward the right and that complicated things… As you naturally expect to see trees standing straight up and all we see here is a silhouette, it makes me want to think that the whole photo is crooked and needs rotated… I know that there might be nothing that you could have done to prevent that, and it’s okay, but I thought I’d still mention it! One last thing: you have a big problem with color noise in the image. I’ll be perfectly honest and say I’m still figuring out how to shoot at night without having a boatload of noise join the party, so I’m not the person who could really tell you how to fix that… Maybe someone can leave Hannah (and me) some tips on that below? I will say since you have a silhouettes, noise is absolutely something I can deal with.

(Also, WELCOME TO AFFINITY PHOTO FOR THE IPAD!!! Well at least to their version of Adobe Camera Raw in the software anyway! More information likely to follow soon…)

Affinity got rid of the color noise already in the image, so you don’t see that in the before/after picutre, but it was there in a big way!

I think that was all the photos and critique I had……. I’ve been typing so long I’ve forgotten! Anyway, I look forward to bringing you another VPO sometime soon!

Be sure to check out our VersePics ministry at http://www.sharpeningcharacter.com/versepics. Also, shameless plug for the podcast: We’re running a very special contest celebrating our 75th episode of the Sharpening Character podcast and we’re giving a away as a prize something I designed that we know you’ll love! Catch up on the rules and everything else at http://www.sharpeningcharacter.com.

Thanks so much to all who submitted!

Ben

VersePic Director for Sharpening Character

[James Staddon]

GREAT critiques, @bensharpeningcharacter!

The best way to keep noise levels low is to keep your ISO setting low. So, ISO 100 is going to be a whole lot cleaner than ISO 800. The best way to keep the ISO low when shooting in low light is to use a tripod and slow shutter speed.

The attachment is a 100% crop on a photo that was taken at dusk, long after the sun had set and it was almost too dark to see anything but the sky. However, it appears very clean because the ISO is 50 and the shutter speed is slow, 30 seconds.

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