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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: Our Favorites

I know you thought this would be over by now, but this is the last post in the 30 Days of Photographs II challenge, I promise. Michael and I said we would choose our favorite photos, and that we have done. Since we seem to be joined at the hip lately, we also made this a shared exercise and spent hours looking at all the photos, discussing our favorites and (dis)agreeing on what to post.

In the interest of keeping it short, we’re doing half and half, so if you can’t find yourself in this post, chances are you either didn’t participate, or Mike’s doing you at his blog. Yes, it’s exactly as dirty as it sounds.

First up, is Mike. The other Mike. CheesyMike of Nicky and Mike at We Work For Cheese. While Nicky and Mike are always mentioned together, Mike certainly held his own in this challenge and provided us with some truly stunning photos to enjoy. His photo for Lines in all its artsy black-and-whiteness was good enough to hang on MikeWJ's wall, and I wouldn’t mind a copy of it myself. And who could forget the lovely branches he shot for Wood? What we went for in the end, though, was the photo Mike posted for Wheels. We simply love this shot, everything from the angle to the lights to the perfect composition and the very pretty wheels. Mike told me he’s been thinking about maybe investing in an SLR camera, and we say go for it! The sooner, the better, because with an eye like this, it would be criminal not to keep taking photos.

Mike - Wheels

Next, we have Mo, the polite Englishman who singlehandedly made everyone’s month when he provided us with 30 days worth of beaver jokes. Mo seemed to be pretty low on ideas for most of the themes, but somehow, a little beaver would conveniently appear to provide him with photo opportunities and made sure Mo had a beaver-filled month. Despite being full of furry beaver, Mo’s photos were incredible; only a very skilled photographer could have made 30 days of beaver look so good. Even his outtakes were amazing! (We especially liked the drowning beaver…) Among the photos he posted during the month, our favourites (don’t mind the spelling, he’s English) were Something I Hate and Ordinary Matters, they were both wonderful displays of focus and framing. The one we picked to display here, though, was his stunning Portrait. The fact that she is holding the damn beaver in her hand just makes her that much more precious.

Mo - Portrait

John, the dufus with no name and a very fruity face if we believe his Portrait was indeed a self-portrait, gave us beautiful photos from Panama, a few history lessons and this great photo of a boat, sitting in the water, all alone, waiting for summer. John took all his photos using his iPhone, something that’s hard to believe when you look at his wonderful photo of the moon. But even though there were many great photos to choose from, Michael and I both agreed to post one of the outtakes. This fantastic self-portrait wasn’t one of the thirty original photos, but it was too good not to display here.

John - Postscript Portrait

For Mariann, this entire challenge was one big experiment on the effects of Ambien on your photographic skills. I’d call it a great success, because Mariann published by far some of the most interesting photos and posts of the bunch. A personal favorite of mine was Outlier, in which Mariann used “Ziva” to score about a million points in Scrabble. Also, check out her outtakes for a wonderful photo of the moon, and the scariest dolls you will ever see. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But when it comes to the photo we chose to publish here, Michael and I were definitely in agreement, we went with her photo for Time, where Mariann photoshopped two halves of her face into one photo. She was 26 years old in one photo, and 51 in the other. 25 years worth of life experience, in one photo. We applaud you. Mariann, and find you stunning, both 25 years ago, and now.

Mariann - Time

LaughingMom’s 30 days were full of frogs and turtle orgies, some great photos and some very memorable and touching posts. Her photo for From an Ant’s Perspective was a gorgeous study of focus and depth of field, and her post for Future was a wonderful tribute to her daughter. In Fish Tales, LM told us about her father, and posted a stunning photo of his hands, but the one Michael and I chose as our favorite, was the last one, The Devil; beautiful photo and a very touching post about the pain of special needs children.

LaughingMom - The Devil

Tanya posted consistently good photos, and has apparently made photography memes into an extreme sport, since she is right now doing another month worth of one-photo-a-day. Poor woman probably has a death wish. A couple of our favorite photos by Tanya were her cat in a mirror, and the stunningly weird clock she posted for Time. I’m pretty sure Michael wants one of those. The photo we chose to display here, however, was her shot for Stranger. Yes, we have a thing for self-portraits.

Tanya - Stranger

Next up is Cheryl, the not-so-amateur-and-more-professional photographer with an unholy love of birds who peck your eyes out. Not surprisingly, Cheryl posted lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of photos of birds, risking us all getting our eyes pecked out. Because that’s what they do. They peck your eyes out. Cheryl also made the wonderful badge I’m proudly displaying in the right-hand column to show that I survived the insanity of 30 Days of Photographs II. In all honesty, though, Cheryl posted too many amazing photos to list here, just go to her blog and look at them all. It’ll be worth it. Beware of the birds, though. The photo Michael and I chose to display here, is the beautiful Devil.

Cheryl - The Devil

Katherine was a late joiner, but we were very happy she decided to join, because if she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy this amazing shot of her son son, flying over a hurdle. However, at one point when we all came over, expecting a nice photo, we actually interrupted a very private moment between Katherine and a fish. We all agreed never to talk about that again. The photo Michael and I chose to display here today, was one that we felt was a little overlooked. When Katherine joined, she posted the photos for the first few days all in one big post, and her photo for Silence was simply amazing.


Katherine - Silence

And last, but most definitely not least, we have Michael, my partner in crime and a gifted writer and truly amazing photographer. I must be really into making a fool out of myself since I keep going into competition against him, but it’s worth it to get to see his photos. Michael has an amazingly impressively, absolutely enormous cactus, writes incredibly funny tags for all this posts, has a knack for making Ordinary Matters seem truly extraordinary and clearly only takes photos when the skies are impossibly blue. Michael posted some truly stunning photos in this competition; he started with a bang for Silence, a fantastically well-composed shot of a headstone at a cemetery. His shot for Power had everyone oohhing and ahhing, and his outtakes were better than most of my posted photos. I thought a lot about what photo of Mike’s to post here. I wanted to post them all, but decided to stick to just a few. I considered showing off Mike’s impressive Wood, but instead went with his beautiful photo of the Moon.

MichaelWJ - Moon

This next photo is his photo for Stranger. He told me he spent ages standing at that spot, taking dozens or hundreds of photos of people walking by, (can we say stalker?) and only a few people ever noticed him taking their photo. This girl definitely noticed, and Mike managed to capture the perfect moment and the perfect look on her face.

MichaelWJ - A Stranger

The last of Mike’s photos that I’m posting is Fire. Ever since I first saw this photo, I can’t stop looking at it. There’s just something about the dramatic smoke, the cars driving away from the fire, and this lone photographer, heading the other way, into danger. It is a fantastic shot and should be published for all the world to see.

MichaelWJ - Fire


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37 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you posted John's outtake photo because somehow I missed it and it's GREAT! 

    Thanks to you and Mike for hosting this little non-contest.  I had a ball.  The recap was really nice too.  Just long enough away from teh 30 Days that I was ready to feel all nostalgic and warm and fuzzy.  I know putting this together was hard work but if you had as much fun as I did it was all worth it!  Please invite me back if you do it again.  I'll be there will cats on!  :)

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  2. A good choice of favourites, Ziva. And I like how you linked to additional photos as well. Boy that was the month that was, wasn't it? As I said on Mike's blog moments ago I really enjoyed seeing everyone else's photos each day and being inspired, personally, to meet each day's theme. I'm glad you liked that out-take/self-portrait of me. The crumpled piece of paper behind the iPad is the month of April with the completed themes written in for each date. I thought it was appropriate to display I was finally done.

    And kudos to you and Mike for having such a great idea and asking the rest of us to straggle along. It was a lot of fun. And we didn't see the whip once.

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  3. Those are awesome photos!

    Just thinking about sorting through all those photos exhausts me.  I think I'll go run 10 miles now.  :)

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  4.  I was wondering what was on the paper. Thanks for solving the mystery for me. :)

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  5.  At first, I thought all these retrospectives on the 30 Days of Photographs II might get old, but each time I see outtakes and samples of the work all of us did, I'm amazed that somehow, sometimes we pulled it off. And we have you and Michael to thank for giving us the whip to continue (well, at least you for the whip).

    While I really liked Michael's Fire photo, I still thought his best was his first: Silence. He laid down the gauntlet there and it was hard to catch up after that...even if it wasn't a contest, after that photo, I thought it was and I knew I'd always be behind. :)

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  6. I haven't seen BonyMike's post yet, but these are great a collection of favourites.  I particularly like the intros to each and the links to other photos of the participants as many of those were also some of my favourites.

    Like everyone else, I had a lot of fun joining this crazy non-contest exercise.  ;-)

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  7. These are all wonderful. And again, I had such a great time with this challenge. Looking forward to doing it again, next year!

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  8. mikewjattoomanymorningsMay 16, 2012 at 9:48 PM

    Ah, just tell the truth: You think that girl in the airport is cute, don't you?

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  9. mikewjattoomanymorningsMay 16, 2012 at 9:54 PM

    There's something about the phrase "I haven't seen BonyMike's post yet" that bothers me, but I can't put my finger on it.

    Oh, wait. Yes I can. Hmm.

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  10. Thank you, Ziva. Yes, I love birds. In fact, if it flies, I want it. Actually if it moves faster than I do, I want it.

    I love your choices (some of them had to be tough) and I'm thrilled you chose Katherine's 'Silence.' One of my favorites of the entire 4 bazillion photos taken.

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  11. mikewjattoomanymorningsMay 17, 2012 at 12:32 AM

    Of course.

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  12. Maybe you and Mike (the other other Mike, BonyMike, not CheesyMike) should become co-bloggers too. Then there would be Nicky and Mike of We Work For Cheese and Ziva and Mike of She Won't Work For Cheese And He Won't Work For Cats (SWWFCAHWWFC). I think that's very catchy.

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  13. Thanks again to both you and Mike for this summary, allowing me to catch up on a batch of great photos I missed over the course of the month. I hope to see everyone engaging in this non-contest again in the future, although I suggest you rename it to, "We Take Photos So You Don't Have To."

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  14. Oh, that's a good name. Or how about "The Thing That Wouldn't Die." I like the sound of that one, too.

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  15.  Oh my god, that would be the best thing since awkward banana!

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  16. mikewjattoomanymorningsMay 17, 2012 at 11:29 PM

    Two, actually.

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  17. Well, Cheryl, if it flies, you should have it, because your photos of birds and butterflies and bees and whatnot, are absolutely amazing. :)

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  18. Of course I do. Who wouldn't?

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  19. Next year? Oh Meleah, you never know when it might strike again. It might be a year from now, it might be tomorrow. Just be prepared for it when it happens. ;)

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  20.  *barf* Get a room already.

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  21. Thanks, Double-O! I'm really glad you had fun. :)

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  22. Wait a second, are you saying Mike won? Because in that case, I am getting out the whip and making you change your mind. ;)

    I know, it's crazy we actually pulled it off. I have no idea where I found the time for it!

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  23. 10 miles? I think I died from exhaustion just reading that.

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  24. Some people misbehaved and saw the whip... ;) Thank you for playing along, dufus, it was a pleasure to have you join. And that self-portrait was really amazing, great job on that one.  :)

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  25.  We will make sure to invite you back, no question about it! I am still amazed you did it all featuring cats. You, my friend, deserve some kind of medal.

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  26. I'm pretty sure that domain name is available.

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  27. This challenge was so intense and painful that reliving it like this is pure pleasure. And I can't wait to do it again just to see what kind of magic everyone comes up with :)

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  28. Thanks Ziva. I also love planes.

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  29.  I guess none of my photos were your favorites!

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  30. PS: I apologize for being a moron! xoxo

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  31. Participating in this was brilliant. You and Mike both summarised you favourites wonderfully, there were some photos in this series that were simply perfect and actually although just a "30 day blog challenge" you guys have captured some clever sods who can take clever shots...

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  32. Thanks, Mo! You are definitely one of the most clever sods we've captured. ;)

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  33. Oh honey, you are NOT a moron! ;)

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  34. Can't wait to do it again? So you did it again?? With words??? ;)

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