Lyra's Project ~ Week 4 ~ Black and White

 This year I've joined up with some of my colleagues from the Beautiful Beasties Network (an international group of professional pet photographers) for the 52 Weeks Project, to collectively challenge ourselves and our creativity with a weekly assignment. Every week a different photographer chooses a theme, which each person interprets in their own way. The photograph must be taken during that week, and on Friday evening (8pm Aussie time) everyone's blog posts go live. Click the link below to see the next photographer's image and continue around the blog circle until you end up back here - enjoy!

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This week's theme was Black and White. Nostalgic images from 1950s street photography immediately came to mind, so I decided to pay homage to one of my favourites: Vivian Maier. I adore the mismatched fusion of gritty, dark urban settings with the inarguable elegance of women at that time. Maier's captivating body of work was only discovered in 2007, at a local thrift auction house, but her impact on the photography world is nonetheless notable. Her images offer us an insight into the world of a young, broke nanny exploring New York City from the 50s right up until the 90s. If you haven't viewed Maier's photography before, I strongly suggest that you take the time to do so (I included a few of my favourites in the slideshow at the end of this post).

I would have loved to shoot this week's photograph on film, had I not been facing our challenge of producing and posting the photo in the same week. I'm really hoping to see some film in the blog circle though! Instead, I've mimicked the aesthetic with a combination of Gaussian Blur layers and added monochromatic noise. Hopefully the final image does my inspiration justice, but I'll let you be the judge. I think my Lyra bear would fit right in with the scruffy street urchins in Maier's photos - pure ragamuffins! We photographed this in Carlton, Melbourne - it took forever because our quiet little alley decided to have a ton of traffic.

Now head over to Tara Lynn, owner of InBetween the Blinks Photographer in Raleigh, NC to see her Black and White photograph. Don't forget to keep on clicking through the blog circle - you'll know you're finished when you make it back to Ragamuffin Pet Photography.