June 2008 - The 4.50 from Derby

The original:

The brief:
I spent a day wandering around the museums in the charming Central England town of Derby last weekend, from which I gleaned a number of potential Friday Challenge subjects that will be appearing over the next few weeks.

First up is this model train I photographed in the industrial museum, which is situated in the world's first factory. It reminded me of the old Agatha Christie story, 4.50 from Paddington, in which a woman sees what she imagines to be a murder through the window of a passing train.

So what intriguing goings-on might we catch through these windows? And can we take the train out of the museum and place it in a more convincing location?


Finished work: (click to view larger - compression kills!)

June 2008 - Fly the flag

The original:

The brief:
An empty flagpole. It's just crying out for a flag...

Use whatever techniques you like - photographed pillowcases, entirely drawn in Photoshop, adapted real flags. As for the design of the flag itself - well, that's entirely up to you.

Finished work - aka 'the briefs' (sorry!):

The originals:


The brief:
Here's a rather curious phenomenon I noticed while sitting in my garden this week. An empty glass sat on the edge of the table, and the refracted view through it was quite different to what I'd expected. Would you like to try to recreate the scene?

It's a rather more technical challenge this week, but an interesting exercise. I'll post a photo of the glass in place next Friday.

Finished work:

June 2008 - Contest 200

The brief:
I'd like self portraits, done in any monumental or illustrative style you like: make yourselves as recognizable or as hidden as you like. Feel free to add a pithy quote if you want to. But for those of you who really, really don't want your faces to appear online - well, you'll just have to be especially imaginative about how you make your appearance!

Finished work: (entitled "In my Dreams"!)