Week 4 - Lucy and MaryElise - Time

Lucy - Right
MaryElise - Left


MaryElise - For Week 4 of the project, I was paired with the lovely Lucy (Solarina). We both went with imagery of a clock, without any prior discussion of how we were going to create our time theme. I love how the blue in her eye compliments the blue of the ocean and sky.

Week 4 - Quizz and Bee Brady - Letters

Left : Bee Brady

Right: Quizz

Bee Brady: At first I toyed with both meanings of the word 'Letters' thinking of ideas of stringing the alphabet through the woods. But in the end this very personal interpretation is the one I settled on. These are some of the many many letters I wrote home to my boyfriend last summer from France, where I was working for 6 months as part of a project to identify soldiers buried in a mass grave from WWI. Letters became a very important thing to me as I read many from soldiers of the first world war, written home to their loved ones, as I too, wrote home to my loved ones. I love how Quizz's photo also fits a very similar interpretaton, without us planning anything at all.

Week 4 - Dolls - MMaeb & MFayre

Above: MMaeb

Below: MFayre

Michelle: Marico and I were definitely on the same wavelength this past week, sharing rather dark thoughts about "dolls" and "suburban dystopia" via emails. My goal with the eyes was to make them doll-like, but still human, and what you see above is a combination of real face-paint and stroke-work in Photoshop. Marico did some fabulous solo images like the ones you see above, and in the end, we decided to combine three of her images into one. I think the result is quite eerie, as we'd hoped. We also have alternate combinations in which I'm posed similarly to her, but on a bed. We liked quite a few of these combinations, but in the end, the pairing above won out.

Week 4 - Bold - Rowandevoe and Geekgirly

Left: Geekgirly

Right: Rowandevoe

"oh it would be so scary, but so BOLD to show this struggle visually-Dark/Sad/Medications over and over again/Alone/Misunderstood/and Get up and start it all over again." BOLD to Merle is about facing depression even though there is a risk of losing friends/family/loved ones and relationships in the process. Although not necessarily my experience, I tend to agree that when people hear the term "mental illness" they run screaming in the other direction. Mental illness, especially depression, does not make the sufferer a monster as some people might think. It is also not something that can be cured over night, it takes time AND the love and support of friends and family.

Week 4 - Fresh - sadandbeautiful (sarah) and Heather Evans Smith (hsmithphotography)

hes- This was a hard theme for me. How to convey fresh? I went with a fresh face / body type of theme and was delighted to see Sarah's citrus shots. The droplets tied both the photos in nicely, only a tweak of the colors was done to make the images work well together.

Week Four - Lena Paloma Elle Moss - Tie

left: Lena Paloma

right: Elle Moss

Elle: I suggested to Lena that we do portrait and black and white.  I haven't work with b/w a lot and she said she hadn't either, so I thought it would get me out of my comfort zone a bit.

I took several closeups of me adjusting a mans tie...with dark nails and lips, in the end, I went with something quirkier (is that a word?) and square.  I love the mix of square and portrait and I love the play on masculine and feminine, which was never discussed between us.

Week 4 - Hat - Sarah Schloo & the melody censor

R: Sarah Schloo
L: the melody censor

tmc: We started discussing format and colour/b&w, but never really came to any concrete decisions before shooting. I love the juxtaposition of how Sarah's eyes are hidden, but mine are the focal point of my image. I think they work well together for being so different in mood.

Sarah: I was really pleased to get hats because I have always wanted to take a picture of this hat that I bought in Vietnam, but never had an idea for it, or got round to it, so this gave me a kick up the bum! I love the beige and brown colours running through this

Week 4- Simple Pleasures- Juliet Home and Pia

Left: Juliet Home
Right: Pia

Pia: This was the first week I took part in the project and I was paired up with Juliet Home, and our theme was simple pleasures. We did't discuss or agree on anything before taking our shots, so it was a happy coincidence that DoF played such a big role in both of our pictures, and both of us shot such domestic scenes.

As a result, here are our simple pleasures!

Week 4: [Ligeia] and Meganzii - Orange

Left: [Ligeia]
Right: Meganzii

Meg: I was super excited to work with Eva this week, because she is awesome. When the themes were announced, I was initially excited until I realized that I do not own anything orange. The first thoughts that came to me were something involving orange make-up or paint, or orange tights. I still hadn't quite decided what I was doing yet when Eva sent her shot. I peeked at it, and am very glad I did, because it encouraged me to definitely go with my "tights" idea. This is the first time I've seen my partner's photo before shooting my own, but I was glad in this case because the theme had me pretty stumped. I admit though, that there was a lot of "cheating" going on on my part here. As I said... I don't actually own anything orange. Photoshop was kind enough to help me transform my tan carpet, grey dress, and pink tights.

Week 3 - Flare - Solarina & Ligeia

Left: Solarina
Right: Ligeia

Lucy and I didn't discuss a lot about this week's shot. We only decide that it will be in colour and square format. Flare was such a difficult thing to achive these rainy days but we managed to do a beautiful dyptich. I only intensified the light of my shot because hers was really sunny :) At first, the dyptich was switched but Lucy suggested to change it and here you have the results. Enjoy it!

Week 3 - Movement - rowandevoe & MFayre

Left: MFayre

Right: rowandevoe

Merle has to be one of the most prolific artists I know, and one of the most patient. We were both battling illness this week, but Merle was a sweetheart and sent me a dozen or so images to choose from. They are all gorgeous images, but I think this combination works best (an alternate version is on my Flickr stream, if you are curious). I decided to illustrate "movement" using a long exposure on the water, while Merle froze her movement. It was very interesting to see how we both interpreted this idea, and as an added bonus I had fun editing Merle-style!

Week 3 - Masks - Leilani and Lena

Over: Leilani
Under : Lena

Leilani and I discussed the landscape orientation of our images and that they would be color the rest was all a surprise and our own interpretations for "Mask"
I got her image and tried different layouts.
To do this picture I draw in my face with eye liner and played with some overlay designs.

Week 3 - Delicate/Soft - Anna and MaryElise

The themes were announced on Friday last week, and Mary immediately sent me an email to ask about my preferences on colour or style of our images. She herself preferred colour over black and white, and she was fairly sure that weather conditions would prevent her from shooting outdoors.

I have already taken my photo before I had a chance to read Mary’s email. As luck would have it, I did shoot indoors and in colour. I was anxious to see Mary’s interpretation of our theme. And fairly nervous too, as the other girls have set the bar really high this week and I was not sure if my image would be a good match for Mary’s undoubtedly gorgeous one.

Mary seemed equally unsure about her image when she finally sent me one, because it was not what she had initially intended. But I loved it and I could not help it but smile when I first saw it.

Unknowingly, we have both used pink in our photos and both our images had some lovely shadows in them. I also loved how my hands mirrored the wave-like dish in Mary’s photo. And I thought it funny that Mary should go for the “soft” whilst I for the “delicate” part of our theme.

After trying out all the possible placing options, we have settled down for this one. We both liked the humorous aspect of the glass perhaps landing on the soft marshmallows.

Week 3 - Night - Quizz & MMaeb

Left: Quizz
Right: MMaeb

Michelle: Bogna sent me the magical image at left, and I played around with various pairings. I'd taken some shots the night before by candlelight, and played with the one at right to make the colouration similar. I think my subject is a bit banal in comparison to hers, but I like some of the shared elements in this pairing - including the emphasis on our fingers.

Week 3 - shadows - sadandbeautiful (Sarah) & Juliet Home

Sarah (left) and I (right) decided to not decide on anything ahead of time. When we were ready, we both came to the table with several options, and these black and white images went together eerily well. Her letter shadows speak to my shadowy self left down in the pantry.

Week 3 - Dress - hsmithphotography and Bee Brady

Left - hsmithphotography / Heather Evans Smith
Right - Bee Brady

Click on it to see it bigger :)

hes - This week's theme came easy for me this week. I asked Brady should we be literal as in a picture of a dress or use it as a verb, like "to dress". We decided we could choose either. I decided to do both, getting dressed in a dress. It just so happened that our dresses are the same color scheme. A happy accident.

BB - I found this week so difficult and I am not even sure why. Just a mental block on 'dress' for some reason. I knew I wanted to do a still life, but I kept changing my mind constantly about how..... I was finally satisfied when I saw how well mine goes with Heather's beautiful self portrait.

Week 3 - Yellow - Elle Moss and the melody censor

Left: Elle Moss
Right: the melody censor

tmc: One part of this project that I love so much is not only seeing each other's different interpretations of the theme, but different perceptions of day to day life as well. When I first read that I was going to be paired with Elle with the theme yellow, I was a little nervous because I know from viewing her photostream that she has quite a bit of yellow in her wardrobe. Through email she told me that she didn't think she had much yellow.

Having only discussed the format of the pictures and to work in colour, I was pleasently surprised to see that the over all tones of each of our photos fit so well together even though the subject matter is so drastically different.

Week 3 - Stripes - Sarah Schloo and Geekgirly

Top: Sarah Schloo

Bottom: Geekgirly

Sarah Schloo: ...this was a shot of some Italian biscuits I took last week on a market stall in London, it was one of a few different images from the market that I was thinking of doing for my 52 weeks, but I ended up choosing another shot. I am so pleased to be able to use this one as well!!

Geekgirly: This was the first time during this project that I actually got to see the image and knew what my partner's subject was. Saying that, I don't think that it really made a difference in the subject matter of my image. I had planned on shooting this image as soon as we were given the themes for this week - I guess you could say that Sarah and I were on the same wavelength!

Week 3 - Dirty - Meganzii and Bronwen Hyde

Left: Meganzii
Right: Bronwen Hyde

The lovely Elle Moss came up with the themes for week three, and she didn't disappoint, inspiring all of us, I'm sure.

Meg and I both had the opportunity to shoot over the weekend, so we dove straight into our 'dirty' theme.

The only discussion we had beforehand was regarding format (which was a very vague discussion, but decided when I took my self-portraits and let Meg know I'd shot landscape), and Meg wanted to work in colour.

Despite knowing nothing of each other's intent, location, props, colour palette, or even whether either of us were doing self-portraits, I squealed with joy when I saw Meg's three image options! Somehow we'd managed to work in very similar colours - green, pink and flesh tones - and both had flowers and leaves as a feature in our composition.

I paired my image with two of Meg's to give her a couple of options, but we both agreed this pairing was strongest: a nice echo between the curve of Meg's hand and the (slight) curve of my body, and a feeling that the out of focus leaves in the bottom right corner of Meg's shot are coming into focus in mine.

Though my original idea had been to combine being dirty, with dirty pictures (a sort of centrefold image) and a dirty look at the camera (somewhat subverting the dirty picture idea with a bit of a Cindy Sherman-esque centrefold - a defiant "I know you're looking at me, but I'm not doing this for your enjoyment" kind of thing) I ultimately decided to go with a less confrontational version of my image when pairing it up with Meg's to give a softer approach that fit more with her image.

We're both quite pleased with our work this week, and can't wait to see what the other ladies come up with!

Week 2 - Jewelry - Quizz & rowandevoe

Left: Quizz...
Right: rowandevoe

Quizz: So this is another collaboration - the project we are taking with friends. This particular one is a mix of Merle's photo (right) and mine (left)...and the subject is "Jewelry." Isn't Merle's photo GORGEOUS?

We did not agreed on any details - this is complitely an accident that it match somehow...but I like how Merle's jewelry are "reall" and classy" while mine are mostly plastic and artificial...it creates an extra "story to it :)

Week 2 - Silhouette - Sarah Schloo & MFayre

Top: MFayre

Bottom: Sarah Schloo

Sarah and I were both very excited about "silhouette," but looking at our images, I think the theme was "woman in a window" and we just didn't know it.

Sarah is traveling, so she sent her image earlier this week, but due to an email snafu it ended up in my spam and I didn't actually see it until today. How exciting! Thinking about "silhouette" brought to mind women in stilettos and tight skirts, but ultimately I decided to go with something a little more subtle for this theme; looking at Sarah's image, I am glad I did.

Kudos to Sarah for shooting this without a tripod and with very little time. Hopefully she likes this pairing...I love it. Every week is so much fun, especially since I get to work with this group of amazing women. Thank you to everyone for your interest thus far!

Week 2 - Blue - hsmithphotography and MMaeb

I was concerned on getting my image done in time due to the fact that I was moving to a new house this past week. I took a few photos and they all seemed to say "blue-green" instead of blue. Michelle pretty much spearheaded this, taking a wonderful selection of photos (both still life and self-portraits) and working with our combinations to pick the best match. One of her still lifes was a little more blue-green as well so they worked together. It might not have been exactly the "blue" theme, we can make our own rules and decided to just go for it.

Week 2: sadandbeautiful (Sarah) and Meganzii - Circle

Left: sadandbeautiful (Sarah)
Right: Meganzii

Our theme this week was "circle(s)". Prior to shooting we decided to shoot color, and in square format. We both shot several different concepts and had a few to choose from at the end of the week. We liked this pairing because of our use of mirrors, and the darkness surrounding the 'circles'.

Week 2 - Paloma and MaryElise - Bed/Bedroom

Left: *Mary Elise*
Right: ~ Paloma~

Mary Elise and I are joining in for week two of the project.
Our theme was "Bedroom/ bed"
We didn't discuss anything about the pictures we just got this shots and put them together. I love how her outdoor shot colors go well with the one I did.
This was so much fun!

Week 2 - Bee Brady and JulietHome - Music

Left - Bee Brady
Right - julietHome
Click on image to enlarge

Juliet and I have very similar self portraiture styles already so I was excited to see what we would come up with together. I am delighted with the result ! I love how together they have made a story, like I am listening to her play through the earth. The only thing we agreed on before was that they would be colour and 8" X 10" crop.

Week 2 - Shoes - Bronwen Hyde and Anna

Left: Bronwen Hyde
Right: Anna

Anna and I have joined in the fun for the first time this week. I think both of us felt that maybe we didn't have time for a weekly project, but ultimately decided the incentive to create was too good, and were greatly impressed by the diptychs created by the other ladies in week one.

Due to the time difference, with Anna being in the UK and myself being in Australia, our quick emails prior to shooting only covered discussion of format, and that Anna wanted to work in colour (I forgot to ask, but had this very colourful image in mind, so was relieved when Anna hadn't opted for B&W).

I also mentioned I had no issue whatsoever with mixing and matching format: landscape and square, portrait and landscape...

I love Anna's image, but initially was concerned about matching up the bold colours in my image with the beautiful muted tones in hers. But I think the echoing positioning of the shoes, the diagonals leading your eye from my image to Anna's and the red popping in both images brings them together much better than I'd have expected.

Week 2 - Hearts/Love - Elle Moss and Geekgirly

Left: Geekgirly

Right: Elle Moss

The only thing that was discussed between the two of us was that our images would be colour and square in format.

Geekgirly: This quote really was the basis for my image: "One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter." ~ James Earl Jones

Elle Moss: "I knew I wanted to do a self portrait and I wanted to do something outdoors and colorful, but then thought of the pop of a red balloon against the dull 'end of winter' trees. I love the final result and find both images share a charming whimsy."

Week 1 - Food - MMaeb & Solarina~Lucy Nuzum

Lucy and I were at a bit of loss, initially, in terms of how to approach the theme of food - especially under tight time constraints. But the creativity started flowing for me as soon as I started thinking about the preparation of food, rather than food itself. I photographed various baking bits and bobs collected over the years, and sent some variations to Lucy. She then proposed the combination above, adding the lovely image of her lips to the mix. All that remained was for me to enhance the saturation of her lip colour slightly to tie the colour values together a bit more. We're not sure it's a perfect combination, but we're both pleased that we managed to pull this together in the end.

Week 1 - Red & White - Sarah Schloo & Quizz

The theme given to us was 'red & white', and I had mentioned to Bogna that I already had a white(ish) picture with a mask in, and she told me she also had a mask picture which she changed to edit with red tones. So on seeing Bogna's picture, I thought I would reverse my mask here so that it matched the white mask of her photo. Our outcome is kind of like we are opposites that match!

Week 1 - Literature. Mfayre and Elle Moss

The only criteria Marico and I had was that we would use color and shoot vertically. It was a nice surprise to see that our tones were similar and I think the mood of each piece is similar as well. We actually each shot a few images and sent them to each other and while all pairings looked great, I think this one worked best. Its that lovely little touch of blue :)

Left: mfayre Right: Elle Moss

Week 1 - Floral - rowandevoe and hsmithphotography

Merle and I didn't set any rules except for a square format. We both adore vintage styles. Merle went for a 1920s-30s feel and I channeled the 1960s. Both of us used flowers in our hair and neither one of us was surprised to see that the other had done the same, seemed like a no-brainer based on our interests. Merle has become quite a confidant of mine lately and I was excited to pair up with her on this project.

Week 1 - sadandbeautiful (Sarah) & the melody censor - kiss

Top: the melody censor
Bottom: sadandbeautiful (Sarah)

During the discussion for this collaboration, Sarah and I agreed that we were having a difficult time come up with ideas that didn't come across as cliche. Apart from that we only made choices on format of the photos (square) and if they should be b&w or colour. When she sent me her images to put the diptych together, I was shocked, and pleased at how well the 2 photos went together without any creative discussion!

She mentioned that her idea cam from some old movies (of her grandfather's?), and looking at them brought "kiss me like they do in the movies" to mind. I toyed with a couple of different ideas before settling on the shorthand version of kiss/hug, xo.

~Susan

Week 1: Lani and Geekgirly - Water

Left: Geekgirly

Right: Lani

So the only thing that was discussed between us was whether our images would be B&W/colour and portrait/landscape. As we both share a similar style of photography we were excited to see what we could come up with. The end result was a pleasant surprise! Both of us noticed right away the fact that the images together tell an interesting story, or rather leave the viewer imagining the scenario involved. :)