Our Picture This! assignment for this month was Background Blur, creating a sense of dimension in the photograph by playing a sharp foreground subject off against a blurry, or unsharp background. Readers sent in a wide variety of subjects, from flowers to statues to birds and carnival rides, all using this time-honored technique. Many used telephoto lenses to enhance the shallow...

Telephoto lenses are great for bringing distant objects closer and giving you "tunnel vision" that isolates parts of your personal field of view. They also have an added benefit, a visual trick most commonly called the "stacking effect," where a series of subjects each distant from one another are brought in much closer visual contact. This compression of...

Every color has an association, and each of us reacts to hues and their shadings in different ways. This month's Picture This! assignment was Blue Moods, and readers sent us in an amazing set of images that conveyed the range of emotions this most evocative color creates. While many relied on the cold side of this color in winter scenes, others found their blue mood in the...

There's an adage in photography that if you're not sure how to deal with the light just turn 90Þ from the source and shoot away, taking advantage of the way light shapes the subject as it streaks along a plane. Our assignment for Picture This! was directional light, and readers responded with images that played with light in many imaginative ways. As these...

Our Picture This! assignment for this month was Neon City, a nighttime endeavor where we asked you to send us images of perhaps the most artistic form of lighting. Neon is an art form that comes and goes, one that has undergone a revival in recent years. But readers sent us samples of neon from likely sources, such as Las Vegas and New York, as well as vintage neon from the past.

Our Picture This! assignment for this month was "Color In Black And White," and readers responded with a wide variety of monochrome images, all made using color film or with color files from digital cameras. The key to this month's selections is that not every color image need be awash with red, green, and blue, but that light and atmosphere can conspire to...

Picture This! - Our Next Assignment

Neon City
O f all the forms of artificial light neon is perhaps the most exciting and creative.