The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Art for art’s sake.

On 26th Oct 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography10 Comments

Well, it looks like we survived the first two named storms of the season, although it did feel like we might get blown and/or washed away over the weekend, so let’s get to The Cosmic Photo Challenge while the getting is good.

In an effort to stay warm and dry, I chose to once again use a prompt which meant I could focus on the creative side of editing; Art for art’s sake.

I spent an entertaining hour over my morning coffee yesterday, playing with my One Lab app, transforming some recent pictures into abstract art.

This, believe it or not, started off as a church

A strange, spheroid shape hovering in the woods

Now let’s see where your artistic muse led you this week…

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To get involved with the challenge; check out the Cosmic Photo Prompt each Friday, then post a photo (or photos) on your blog the following Monday, with a pingback link to my Monday post.
Tag your posts with #CosPhoChal.

Any and all effects, editing, Photoshop, Instagram, morphing, collages, animation, gifs, or whatever other post production techniques you fancy are permitted, (in fact, they’re actively encouraged!) so get creative and turn your photos into artworks for the Cosmic Photo Challenge

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Repetition.

On 19th Oct 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography19 Comments

Good morning, everyone, I hope you had a pleasant and relaxing weekend, now it’s time to get down to the serious business of The Cosmic Photo Challenge.

The theme this week was inspired by my first photo, of a line of identical, half-machined bearing housings at work; Repetition.

But on Saturday I thought of a more creative spin on the prompt, an idea which ended up taking several hours to complete, but which produced some rather striking results.

I decided to multiply individual elements of perfectly ordinary scenes, to create the surreal masterpieces you see below. This involved taking a copy of the original picture, painstakingly removing everything but the chosen object (by precision fingertip erasing on my tablet), then manually repositioning each copy back onto the original.

These are the cutouts I created from the original photos

This was complicated enough, of course, without giving myself the extra work of adding in multiple reflections and re-adding an overhanging branch into not one but two overlapping layers of images, just to give that extra look of convincing unrealism.

I have to say I’m extremely pleased at how they came out, you’ll notice I even blanked out a couple of neighbourhood car number plates, a touch I was especially amused by.

Ok, back in the real world, what repeats did you manage to capture..?

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Patterns in black and white.

On 12th Oct 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography9 Comments

Good morning, welcome to the best start to the week, The Cosmic Photo Challenge, which today is themed around the prompt; Patterns in black and white.

There’s also a bonus Art for art’s sake photo, because I couldn’t resist.

I walked from home to Tesco and back on Saturday morning and captured the many different types of iron inspection covers there are on the pavements, along with some zig-zag brick paving and two differently constructed walls.

But we’ll start with a simple shot of a drainage grate which, when I got home and first looked at it, reminded me of a tower block against a cloudy sky, reflected in a puddle.

So, hold that thought…

An interesting experiment:
These are the machined ends of aluminium blocks at work. Now, if I had told you they were the ends of sawn timber, would you have known they were silver and not pine-coloured?

This is an enhanced “height map” image of the stone wall in the second image.

And now the extra picture I couldn’t resist making, for which I decided, in keeping with the prompt, I would use black and white, with just a touch of colour for effect.

I’m not sure how good my upload resolution is, but I think all the details should be visible if you zoom in on larger screens.

There are 26 separate images in this collage, including; 5 squirrels, 7 pigeons, a dalek, a bee, 4 of me and the moon.

Now let’s see how your pattern recognition projects went over the weekend…

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Shooting through.

On 10th Aug 20269th Aug 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography9 Comments

Good morning, all you lovely people, I hope you enjoyed the weekend, whatever you chose to do with it. Hopefully your plans included space for The Cosmic Photo Challenge and this week’s theme; Shooting through.

To recap the needlessly cryptic prompt, it simply refers to taking your photos through something; windows, doors, pipes, under bridges, tunnels, holes in, well, anything I suppose.

You get the idea.

But I didn’t do any of those things.

Well, I kind of did, then I had another idea and decided to use both.

Anyway, my original photos were shot through tunnels of trees, gaps in hedgerows, between fence panels, my front and back door, I even tried one through a metal egg ring.

And my other idea had been to use photos of windows and doors as frames for unusual views of something you wouldn’t have expected to see, so it seemed obvious to me that I should combine the two.

You honestly would not believe how long it took to edit all the small details. No AI or Photoshop here, all done with overlays and fingertip erasing of backgrounds on my phone. I have included copies of the original views for reference. ;~}

It’s amazing how the human eye and brain can detect tiny inconsistencies in edited images, which then spoils the entire illusion. So I include often difficult to achieve, yet almost unnoticeable details (just the plants and leaves overlapping the door and window frames in the first two took about half an hour each), because it tricks the eye into blending the two images together in your head.

What apertures did you capture your contributions through this week..?

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Shadows.

On 6th Jul 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography14 Comments

Hi there, welcome to your Monday pick-me-up, The Cosmic Photo Challenge, here to usher in a new week of photographic creativity to take your mind off the daily grind.

This week we’re concentrating on a lack of light, more specifically; Shadows.

After the blisteringly hot weather we’ve been having, I didn’t think I’d have any problems capturing some nice, stark silhouettes over the weekend, but the skies remained stubbornly overcast and I thought I was going to have to resort to archive pictures.

But it occurred to me that photos taken at night are chock full of shadows, in fact they’re mostly shadows, so I took a few of those in the garden.

Then, on Sunday afternoon, the sun made a brief appearance for about ten minutes, reflecting off windscreens of cars parked outside the window. This created an overlapping collage of shadows, made from the net curtains, a window hanging and a spider plant, all cast on my living room wall. After a spot of fiddling with contrast and brightness, I had some wonderfully arty images.

These are all single exposures, the ones at night were just a bit longer. ;~}

I even appear as a reflection in the picture frame

What shadowy activities did you get up to since we last got together? Go on, you can tell us…

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Distortion.

On 22nd Jun 20266th Sep 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography12 Comments

Good morning, welcome to a new week and a new Cosmic Photo Challenge to start your Monday with a bang, or at least a snap.

This week’s challenge is all about; Distortion.

As I cheekily suggested in Friday’s prompt, this could be a chance to play with editing features you maybe hadn’t experimented with before. But any images of distorted objects, shots taken through an obscuring surface, etc. however you wish to interpret the theme is, as always, up to you.

I used an app called Glitch Lab to produce my pictures, the originals of which I have also included for reference.

Now let’s see what sort of twist you gave the prompt this week…

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Symmetry.

On 18th May 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography20 Comments

Hi there, it’s time for The Cosmic Photo Challenge to start your week, with today’s theme being; Symmetry.

I used the natural forms of ferns and trees to create my symmetrical artworks, their fronds and branches making wonderfully intricate patterns when multiplied.

Now let’s see if you were in a reflective mood at the weekend…

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Art for art’s sake.

On 4th May 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography10 Comments

Good morning, welcome to a bank holiday edition of The Cosmic Photo Challenge, which this week concentrates on creativity, with the prompt; Art for art’s sake.

I spent a few hours yesterday, making one of my surreal collages from so many photos, I lost track of the number I used, but there are lots. I had particular fun with the reflections in this one…

Where did your artistic muse take you this week..?

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Still life.

On 12th Jan 202611th Jan 2026 By dalecooper57In arts, photography13 Comments

Good day to you all, I hope you had a pleasant break, now it’s time for The Cosmic Photo Challenge to brighten your Monday, with this week’s theme being; Still life.

As always, however you wish to interpret the prompts on our challenge, we’re here for it, that’s the beauty of our lackadaisical approach to rules.

But when I set the theme on Friday, apart from having no real idea of what I was going to do, it occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely certain what “still life photography” actually meant.

So I looked it up.

Amongst other things, it seems the general guidelines come down to:

Backgrounds: Select simple, complementary backgrounds that don’t distract.
Cohesive Objects: Pick items that tell a story or share a similar style (e.g., antique theme).
Create Layers: Arrange objects at different heights and levels for depth.
Rule of Thirds: Place key elements on imaginary lines or intersections for balance.

Also suggested were; using fabrics to soften and create textures; adding bowls of fruit or flowers to connect to nature or give a “lived in” feel; give depth by lighting from the side, instead of from in front or above, and drawing inspiration from classical still life paintings.

So, taking all of this sage advice on board (I could only manage a small ramekin of blueberries at short notice), I spent Saturday evening setting up a photo shoot in my living room. I rather enjoyed it, too. ;~}

Here I present three differently lit shots, each taken from slightly different perspectives, you’ll have to decide for yourselves if your favourite is the same as mine…

Now let’s see what still life means to you…

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Abstract.

On 8th Dec 2025 By dalecooper57In arts, editing and effects, photography9 Comments

Hello there, it’s only two weeks until the holidays, but here at The Cosmic Photo Challenge we haven’t got festive yet, in fact we’re positively vague about the subject of today’s theme; Abstract.

That gave us almost unlimited scope for our photographic offerings this week and I spent a Zen-like couple of hours yesterday creating this abstract collage from strips I cropped from pictures of random objects around the house and other old photos.

Where did your artistic muse lead you this week..?