Photo Assignment #3 – Blue

The Digital Photography School’s assignments for the month of January are focussing entirely on colour. This week, it’s blue. Here goes:

Chicago Stock Exchange Window

Alright, so I’m cheating right off the bat. I was supposed to take photos this week. This one was taken this past summer. I was in the Chicago Art Institute. The original Chicago Stock Exchange was designed by renowned architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler and was built in 1894. When it was eventually torn down almost eighty years later, the Institute was able to save enough pieces of it – including  some of the art glass used in decoration – to reconstruct the trading floor room. This shot is of an office window. I loved the frosted effect on the glass and the glow of the light behind it with the bits of blue at the top and bottom. I have a few more cheating photos but I’ll save them till the end.

Lonely Gem

This is my big-boned girl, Gemini, gazing over the fence at the other girls in the herd, wearing their blue winter covers. Gem is in solitary because of her tendency to break the fence for access to the grass on the other side. She doesn’t go anywhere. Just wants the grass. But the other girls are apt to wander. (She doesn’t wear a winter cover… she grows a thick coat all her own.) And no, she’s not actually lonely.

Winter Garden

Another shot of my winter garden. No colour manipulation. Just a different angle with different light. Makes you wonder what true colour is.

Driving to Peterborough

This is what the drive from my home down the 115 to Peterborough looks like. It’s mostly rural. I wanted to prove that there was some snow around when it looked as if it might be a snowless winter at home. Although today that wouldn’t be a problem… it’s snowing like crazy and expected to keep it up for the next couple of days.

Marking the Territory

The gas company paints these blue marks on the curb so it can find the access point to the gas line into the house. The bright blue paint caught my eye when I was searching for subject material for this assignment. I fooled around with making the blue dot a colour focal point and the rest of the image black and white. But I actually preferred the photo as it was shot.

Port Elgin Sunset

Ok, I admit… another cheat. And yes, another sunset. But they make such beautiful images. This is Port Elgin this past August. No manipulation. That’s exactly how it looked.

Chicago Old Chicago New

Well, since I’m back to cheating, this is another photo from my Chicago visit. I loved the juxtaposition of the modern skyscraper with the older architecture. It almost looks like a painting to me.

Slice of Chagall

Part of the Chagall Windows exhibition at Chicago’s Art Institute. The blues are so vivid that even though this was taken last summer, how could I not include it in a post about blue?

Frank's Church

A visit to Chicago isn’t complete without checking out the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The muted blues are partly light-created and partly paint. The courage it must have taken to commission FLW to design the Unity Temple!

And that, dear friends, is the end of this week’s photo exhibition, cheats and all. And no, I’m still not submitting anything. However, I’m not above creating another poll. Notice it’s in blue!

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• Blue Hour Photographs From Around the World (mycercatrova.wordpress.com)