Monthly Competitions

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subjects, typically commonplace objects that may include both natural (fruit, flowers, rocks, etc.) and manufactured ones. Essential to a good still life is the meticulous arrangement of the components, where everything works together in a pleasing composition. Soft, warm lighting is usually the best choice, but whatever lighting you use, it should be complementary to the mood or feeling you’re trying to evoke.

Texture refers to the visual quality of the surface of an object. It’s how a subject’s surface might feel if touched—smooth, rough, soft, or prickly. Texture can be found everywhere, from peeling paint on an abandoned building to the bristly hairs on a bee—even on the seemingly smooth surface of a flower petal. By enhancing and capturing the texture of your subject, you can create more dimension, sense of depth, and “feel.” Lighting from the side of the subject can often reveal texture you never knew was there.

By creating motion blur in a photo, you can convey the feeling of movement or action. You can create a sense of motion in two ways: Keep the camera stable so the background stays sharp while the subject moves within the frame. Alternatively, move (pan) the camera to follow the moving subject and keep it as sharp as possible, with the background becoming blurred from the camera movement. Do not use software to “generate” motion blur. Capture the motion in camera.

Reflections offer opportunities to create symmetry, abstraction, depth, and visual interest in your photos. For this assignment, use natural or artificial reflective surfaces to capture scenes creatively. Reflective surfaces can include more than just water. Experiment with windows, mirrors and metallic surfaces. Look for symmetrical reflections or highly distorted ones; try different perspectives to create something unusual.

Backlighting occurs when the subject is positioned in front of a light source. This positioning can yield quite dramatic and creative effects such as silhouetting the subject, casting a glow/halo around the subject, calling special attention to the outer contour of the subject, or illuminating a translucent subject. Backlighting should be intentional and viewed as a creative choice.

This is all about moving from one place to another with intention or purpose. “Getting around” applies to people running the bases or for a bus, automobiles on a racetrack or stuck in traffic, trains speeding by or loading passengers, a kayaker running a river, a dog dashing for a toy, birds in flight, fish leaping a waterfall, or seeds caught on a gust.

Eyes have been called "the windows to the soul”—and in photography, they can be the gateway to emotion, story, and connection. This theme invites you to explore the power of eyes in all their forms: human, animal, symbolic, or abstract. Whether it’s a piercing stare, a subtle glance, a hidden gaze in a crowd, or even the “eye” of a storm or needle, we challenge you to capture a photo where the concept of “eyes” is central, evocative, and unforgettable. Look closely. What do you see?

This theme challenges photographers to seek anomalies in a scene—compositions where something or someone stands out as being different from whatever else is in the frame: A tiny dog being walked with several very large ones, an historical building surrounded by modern high rises, someone reading a book among a crowd of phone-scrollers, a beautiful flower poking up from a pile of trash.

Any photo of any subject taken outdoors after sunset to before sunrise. Thus, no sunsets or sunrises. Try to capture something interesting about the nighttime in some way: a lonely person standing under a streetlight, a busy intersection with streaks of headlights and taillights, people around a table at an outdoor café, an old building under a dark sky with light shining from the windows. “Blue hour” and Milky Way photos will qualify, but why not try for something less common?

This is our usual October theme. See “Competition Info” on the club website for more information.

Layering in a photograph can help create depth and interest. Think about including foreground, middle ground, and background layers. The “classic” example of layering would be a landscape photo of mountains with all the near-to-far ridges visible. However, layering isn’t limited to landscape photography. Street scenes, sports, gardens, even macros and still lifes can provide opportunities for layering.