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Photo Challenge

Minimalist

This week, show us your minimalist photos.

Tiny hands, tremendous love. A minimalist portrait by Jen Hooks.

An artfully executed minimalist photograph is anything but mundane. It illustrates a moment in time, or an artistic perspective, with simplicity and grace.

Minimalist photography is characterized by a large portion of negative space, a fairly monochromatic color palette with good contrast, and an interesting subject that is able to stand on its own to capture the interest of the viewer. At first thought, it may seem like it would be easy to shoot an engaging minimalist photograph, when indeed it can often be the opposite. A minimalist photo can also effectively tell a story, in spite of its relative simplicity, and it is anything but “plain”.

A minimalist photo of a baby boy in his crib, by Jen Hooks. The Daily Post, WordPress.com. November 7, 2014.

Tiny hands, tremendous love. A minimalist portrait by Jen Hooks.

In this week’s challenge, show us your minimalist photos. Find an interesting texture, color, or silhouette. Maybe there is a story that you can tell with your minimalist photo. Try an interesting angle with your composition to turn a traditional scene into a minimalist one, by eliminating as much of the extra detail in the background as possible. Make sure you’ve got good contrast, and your focus is nailed on the part of the photo that is telling the story, such as the tiny hand in the photo above.

Remember, minimalist doesn’t equate to mundane. Sometimes the simplest photographs make the boldest statements.

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    1. Hi Mara! It is indeed a minimalist photograph. Well done! I find it especially compelling because of the wrought-iron detail on the window, in an otherwise rather stark photo. Great job!

      Liked by 1 person

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    1. Thank you for the kind words. 🙂

      Your photo would be even more minimalist if you got a bit closer to the arrow painted on the ground (I assume that is your intended focal point,) and composed the photo such that it included a lot of asphalt negative space, and featured the arrow in the bottom right portion of the photo.

      A great choice! Thanks for participating.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. Thanks. This one is from last saturday I think, two planes, like a race on the same way. The second was a bit faster, but I couldn’t see the end of this ‘race’. I followed them along the whole sky It’s a series of 5 or 6 photos, and first I wanted to blog the one with more live on it, then I saw this theme. Perhaps the next days the ‘maximalist’ ! 😉

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    1. Very interesting, Steve! I’d love to see a version of this where you capture one of her eyes and the ear in the same frame, with more whitespace above and to the left of the kitty.

      Liked by 1 person

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    1. This is so lovely! I would love to see a version of this where you crop in tight to the water droplet, and have more negative gray space to the bottom left of the focal point.

      Well done.

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      Reply

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