WEEK 0: Kicking off the 2021 Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge

Hi everyone, here we are just a few days from 2021 on our way to leave 2020 behind us, hopefully for good.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge, we follow weeks from Sunday to Saturday. Therefore the first Challenge week doesn’t start on the first of the year but on the week that bridges both years. This year we decided to create a buffer week and start WEEK 1 with the first weekend of the year.

Some exciting news, we have new Contributors this year adding Ulrike’s, Klaus’s and Tonya’s talent to our weekly contributions. A new look with a new logo and a new banner style are also part of our makeover as we enter the 13th year of The PhotoChallenge as conceived by Trevor Carpenter in 2008. A big Thank-You to Eugenie Robitaille of Tempus Aura Studios for the new look.

2020 was a rather peculiar year that impacted many of us in many different ways, too often in a negative way. A quick look at the tally of events for 2020 on Wikipedia shows us that COVID-19 pretty much dominated the calendar worldwide.

There was however a lot of other events that deserve some attention:

Australian bushfires
West Coast wildfires
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quit the royal family
Kobe Bryant’s death
Impeachment of President Donald Trump
Stock market crash 2020
Black Lives Matter protests
“Murder hornets” arrive in the US
Beirut explosion
Eddie Van Halen’s death
SpaceX Privately Launches humans into space
Black Lives Matter Protests
Riots and Looting
US Presidential Elections

…and the list goes on, these are merely but a few examples I can come up with…

From a professional press photographer’s lens, this is what 2020 generated as images for The Associated Press Photographers – Some images may be disturbing: In 2020, AP photographers captured a world in distress (apnews.com)

As we transition into 2021, we’ll all have our own personal feelings regarding 2020. This is where this week’s special theme starts to materialize.

THEME:
SUM UP 2020 IN ONE PHOTOGRAPH

TECHNIQUE:
SELECTIVE COLORING
(The main subject remains in color while the rest of the image is in B&W)

We are more than just going to desaturate part of the image, we will process it as a B&W image while leaving the main subject as we would a full-color image.

You’re in essence selecting what will remain in color vs selective color is where you select the colors that remain in the image.

Here’s an example of the technique and how to accomplish it using PhotoShop from PhotoShop Essentials: Selective Coloring Effect In Photoshop (photoshopessentials.com)

If you’re using GIMP, here’s a quick summarized video tutorial:

DEFINING YOUR CHALLENGE:
1. Take a new photograph of a subject that defines/sums up 2020 for you.
2. Process the image in SELECTIVE COLORING leaving the subject in its original colors while selectively processing the rest of the image in B&W

man wearing santa suit while using snow skin boots — Photo by Nikola Johnny Mirkovic on Unsplash

If I were to use the above image as an example for this challenge, Holiday after Holiday canceled due to COVID, Santa has nothing to do but skate around and lose some weight…

From all of us here at The Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge, we’re extending our warmest thoughts and best wishes for 2021

Happy New Year!

The friendly community guidelines are pretty simple:

Take a new photo for the current weekly theme, not something from your back catalog or someone else’s image.
Post your photo each week to our active communities on Facebook or Flickr (or both). Tag the photo: #2021photochallenge #photochallenge #tempusaura
Don’t leave home without your camera. Participating in the 2021 Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge is fun and easy.