And so, here we arrive at the eleventh straight month of weekly photo challenges. I’m fast approaching 52 straight weeks of photo challenges…

So, now it’s time to see if my November efforts were profound, perfunctory, or both.

45. Face a Fear

This is a shot from my hike of the Dirty Harry Peak Trail. The fears were ostensibly the cliff I was walking out on, and the wet low visibility drive out there.

I like this shot.

On the one hand, I’m leaning hard on using roadways as a leading line, which is a bit of a thoughtless, easy composition by this point. But, because the road is so windy and reflective, and only really in the bottom 2/3 of a photo dominated by mountains, this adds some complexity to the cliche.

I really like the mist rising from the hillsides and the starkness of everything, but I’m not so sure how much I’m fond of the rest of the image processing details. Namely, the shadows are a bit smudgey and not as contrasty as they could be.

This is in fact because I had the contrast curve on the camera set to the same setting as Week 41. High Key, and though I had realized this midway through my photos, I decided not to change it. It adds something, but it also takes something away.

46. Wabi-Sabi

Wabi Sabi is a Japanese term for appreciating imperfect beauty in nature. There is a lot of beauty around the Puget Sound, and all of it is imperfect in some way.

I took this shot during a walk around the Denny-Blaine/Harrison neighborhood.

It’s an imperfect wall, with graffiti, shot with a fisheye lens. The lens is stopped down so that the water droplets that accumulated upon it are used as part of the composition.

47. Fill The Frame

Walking home through the Denny Triangle on a Friday night, I was struck by “Three Women,” an Akio Takamori sculpture of three figures, located on the sidewalk near Whole Foods.

I decided to focus on / fill the frame with the face of one of the titular three women, highlighting the way that the installation has been exposed to various elements over time, and drawing a sharp contrast between light & darkness.

I took this on my phone as I did not have my camera with me.

48. Inspired by a Photographer

In the midst of Thanksgiving merriment, I did not really want to spend too much time working on my craft apart from family. I instead decided to do a poor imitation of Joel Satore’s Photo Ark project (which my sister introduced me to), using a stuffed turkey (which belongs to my mom), using a mineral photography setup (which belongs to my dad.)

I opted to photograph the lifeless stuffed animal in front of a black background, which means it was delicately positioned and framed atop a black piece of construction paper for the shot.

There goes another month!