Still life
Happy to be Inside
Happy to be Inside
I’ve always liked this window and have made many pictures with it. But most were not satisfying. Today I wanted to make something that summed up how I felt about the weather here right now. It was raining most of the day and quite cold outside. But inside it was warm and cosy. How do I show that? I think this one works for me. What do you say?
56/365 Let’s Go Bowling Dude
Dude Let's go bowling
I was in Tescos in Forest Row and saw these skittles. For some reason they called to me so I bought them. Then when the person I had wanted to shoot today didn’t get back to me in time I thought “Let’s go bowling Dude”. Seemed appropriate at the time.
27/365 An Old Wrinkly Thing
Old Wrinkly
What do you mean it’s no different from yesterday’s post?
15/365 Chandleresque
chandleresque
Okay so what’s the story with this? Well I had several opportunities to make pictures today but I decided to “leave it till later” when I thought my best opportunity would come. So of course it turned out that wasn’t possible.
So it was getting late and I was wondering if I should fall back on Jasmine as I knew she was around. Then I thought I wanted to do something more with a hat as a hat all by itself has a great deal of character. That led to the raincoat I had acquired a few months ago as a prop but had never used. So then I grabbed the coat and hat stand and put them all together. Then I thought it needed something more so I put the gun in the picture. Then I just thought it would be amusing to add a flashgun. Maybe not but it’s there.
Then I wanted the light to be the light of something like a neon sign or that of the sun through blinds over a window. Didn’t have any blinds. So I made them from a cardboard box and some gaffer tape as you do.
Then I made 51 exposures adjusting the light for just the right placement of shadows and light on the scene.
Then into processing and I restricted the palette and made some other tweaks to get what I was thinking was a ’40s look. Not that I particularly know what a ’40s look would really be it is just what I conceived of as a ’40s look.
13/365 Fruit Bowl
fruit bowl
For at least a week I’ve been avoiding this picture. I just hadn’t come up with an idea of how to light and compose it. Tonight I was not feeling like making a picture for today. The last few days I’ve made plenty but the rule is that I can’t use something previously done and just post a new image. No no. I have to shoot and process a new image each day.
So tonight I was playing around with light. Throwing different colours on the far wall and shooting some plastic flowers in front of it. It was supposed to end up as a sunrise type picture made entirely artificially. But it wasn’t very interesting as a subject. Then I saw the neglected bowl and decided to replace the flowers with it. I instantly had me a composition that showed the shape. I lit the back walll with a blue gel on an SB24. The bolw was lit from above and slightly to the left with a Vivitart 285 in a softbox with a small reflecting card to the right. Don’t recall the settings.
And there it was.
5/365 Orchids
orchids
Well today’s pic was quite a bit of work. I had shot two other setups before I did this one. The first was daffodils and it had some merits but I really didn’t like the composition and couldn’t find a way to do better with it.
The second attempt was with these using a shorter lens and again the composition just wasn’t working out. So I changed to a longer lens and adjusted the setup a bit and got this which I liked a whole lot better.
There’s no getting away from it I keep going toward a painter type of finish in my processing. It is not deliberate. I’m just looking at the tones or the details and looking to emphasise one thing over another or tone down another part. I just don’t care if it looks like a photograph as long as it works as an image.
In case you’re interested the flowers were in a pot on a small table in the studio with a green blanket way back behind them. The light came from a Vivitar 285 in an overhead softbox. There were three exposures used in this with the same settings on camera but with the flash fired at different power settings. The three images were then brought together and tonemapped.
Not a conventional type of HDR photography and it may have been completely unnecessary. I’ve not heard of anyone else getting different exposures in that way. It was actually incredibly hard to do even with a tripod because of the length of the lens. The tiniest movement of the camera would jiggle the image about wildly. I had to fire the shutter using delay as I dont have a remote for it.
Enough ramblings.
