The last day, and I was struggling to figure out something to take a picture of with a long exposure that matched my color scheme!! I tried pouring water into a clear glass pitcher to see how the bubbling action would show up over a few seconds. Not good! Then I had a better idea! I tried rolling a tangerine across my backyard patio. Now that visual should scare all of you. There I was, laying on my stomach on the stone, trying to focus my camera, which was propped on the stone, so of course I had to turn my head sideways to even see through the viewfinder. I'm way too old for this..... Plus activating the shutter while trying to roll a stupid tangerine not too fast in front of the lens.... well, it just wasn't working out at all.
So I walked around the kitchen and saw these silk oak leaves that I use for filler on plates when I entertain. They were garnishing a bowl of lemons. Bingo! I'll have them blowing in the wind! But, alas, there was no wind. So I went into my family room where there was an unadorned wall, and I stood about 10 feet in front of it to avoid shadows, arm outstretched with the leaves in my hand, and experimented with shutter speeds and ISO to get a decent exposure. I was able to get about a 1/2 second exposure while I slowly moved my hand. So here I am with camera in right hand held up to face (unsupported other than by hand holding it up), and left arm outstretched holding these leaves and moving them slowly. I'm sure there is a combination of camera shake and intentional hand movement that has resulted in this image, which I actually like!
So, there you have it. Trials and tribulations of getting a shot on the last day of the challenge.
Egg.... raw, hard-boiled, fried, scrambled, deviled, whole, broken..... lots of choices. Somehow, I saved today's picture until after I went out for lunch with a friend. By the time I got back, I was full, and didn't want to think about anything relating to food, or edible. I certainly didn't want to cook an egg (and feel duty-bound to eat my prop). What do do?
I'm not great at setting up little scenes, so I just grabbed my grandmother's (the crocheted doily and button grandma) old wooden chopping bowl (another memento) and just put a bunch of eggs in it. Boring. So I decided that showing the bright yolk would at least enliven the scene, so I cracked one of the eggs and voila! Some color! Not a particularly inspired shot, but I took the bowl into my backyard and the late afternoon indirect sun at least provided some soft light and shadows. So, looking at the positive side of things, the lighting is good and the yolk pops. :)
Ok, one more day to go!! I think I can!
Sometimes, when you least expect things, they happen. This morning, I got my small camera backpack out, put my camera and one lens inside, and headed off to seek out some lines. I had no specific ideas for my line image, but I did have to make one stop first, at the lab to have blood drawn for my annual physical. Of course I left my camera backpack in the car, since I was only going to be a few minutes.
I signed in and sat down in the waiting room, read a magazine and watched as a few people were called before me. After someone left the inner sanctum beyond the waiting room, she left the door open. I happened to look up, and saw the markings on this door. This is the side of the door on the inside of the office, directing people where to exit to the waiting room and beyond, and is usually closed.
Whoa!! Check out those lines! So, quickly, I grabbed my iPhone out of my purse and walked over to the door, while two people looked at me. I took this shot of the pattern on the door, with the exit sign a perfect addition (in the correct color, of course!), then explained to the lookie-loos what I was doing.
After I finished my appointment, I left and decided to go to the garden shop I had thought about going to. I did take about 25 photos there, but don'tcha know I liked my first, serendipitous, shot the best!
So now you know the story behind this wild pattern of lines!
Hallelujah, a very, very easy day!! These doors are on the cabinet next to my desk. And, they fit my color scheme. So, all I had to do was get my camera, sit on the floor and take about 3 shots to get this! How lucky is that? What can I say? With three more days, I'm looking for easy!
Ok, so we've all seen the insides of fruit. What kind of fruit should I get? Something pretty, not bland, something easily sliceable/cuttable and most important, it has to fit into my color scheme. So I went to the store and bought a nectarine (pretty on the outside, for sure), a deep red plum (which should have a gradation of color in it from yellow to orange to deep red), a nice richly-colored ripe apricot, and a blood orange.
Eager to try an abstract of the variegated plum, I cut that first. I cut a nice slice down the middle and around the pit. Now to just twist it apart and see that lovely inside. Whoops! Wrong! A little too ripe, so it got a bit squooshy as I tried to twist it. Then, of course, the fruit stuck to the pit and didn't separate from it like in all those wonderful stock photos. Hmmmm... So I tried individual wedge shaped slices, but, while they did have some color gradation, the handling of the plum caused some serious mushiness at the edges and around where it had attached to the pit. Darn! Oh well, what to do with those little wedge slices I cut? Of course I ate them while pondering my next move.
The apricot. Firm, but still beautifully colored, and ripe. Again I cut around the center, and the compliant apricot separated nicely into two pieces. But....boorrriiinnnngggggg. Yes, it was a nice rich color, but no texture to speak of. Ok, so that, too got swiftly dispatched to my stomach.
Ok, I only have two fruits left before another grocery store run... the nectarine.. Beautiful yellow-orange-crimson skin with those tiny little speckles. But alas, not being completely ripe, it was pale inside, hard as a rock, and it, too wouldn't rotate free of the pit. But, that went into the trash, as it was still crunchy. I don't like crunchy nectarines.
So, by default, I was left with the blood orange. More interesting than those regular oranges on my tree, and definitely beautiful up close. I got this shot, using the toothpicks on some plastic glasses to hold up the slice while it was lit from behind. I was going to crop it and go for an abstract macro, but something about the lines of the glasses and toothpicks just made me leave it as is and not try get in close. I may save that abstract for another day!
Paper.... so many things to do with paper. So I dragged out some construction paper I've had in a drawer since my kids were in school. Antique paper, almost.... and since I have always admired all the light-and-shadow photographs of bent/curled/folded paper, I decided to do that for my daily shot.
Well, it's not so easy... About 10 sheets of curled up, rolled up, scrunched up, stapled up paper can bear witness to that. They are now in my trash can, along with various circles cut out and sort of rolled into potato chip shapes, which, while interesting to make, didn't want to arrange themselves into an attractive composition.
So I got out a pencil and started curling some strips around it that I had cut out. Note to self: Do not use six-sided pencils - they create lines in your curves. So I hunted around and found a round pen which I then used to create these curls. Fat curls, skinny curls... by this time I was frustrated and just wanted to get some pictures. Lots of trial and error, late at night (early in the morning actually). I'm glad there are only 5 days of this madness left! :)
But, I got my paper curls. And I felt like a true kindergartner at heart!
Would you believe we still had part of a box of cookies we were given as a holiday present that somehow escaped being eaten! Well, I found them deep in the back of the pantry, so out they came for today's theme. What can I say? They're cookies. They're brown. But unlike my other food subjects, I think these cookies will be safe. Too many to eat, plus I don't really care for them, so I just put them back, neatly, into the box they came in. No one will be the wiser around here... ;)
Cardboard carton...my first thought was one of those Chinese take-out food containers, which could have been interesting in so many ways. Empty, full, angles, etc. But then I started with this color scheme, and well, I had to be more creative. Ever thinking of food, I came up with the idea of either a box of candy, or a carton of ice cream. That wasn't even a contest!
So, as soon as I finish my uploading of images, my prop will meet the fate of similar edible props from days before...
Button, button, who's got the button? I tried to come up with something interesting - some different kind of button. At 12:05 a.m. I went downstairs to the garage, with a handy-dandy LED light, to try to take a picture of the red starter button on my husband's car. Ok, so it was dirty and I cleaned it, but alas, it was on a black dashboard, and I didn't like how it came out, so I went to bed without my picture, but at least I'd have all day to think about it. After waking up, I started thinking of what I could find of interest that had a button. At my dentist's office, I asked if they had any interesting buttons on machinery. Nope. When I came home, I scoured my closet for anything that would fit my color scheme. Another nope.
So I decided to look in my sewing basket for a button, and then it hit me. I have my mother's and grandmother's sewing baskets! I kept the baskets after they died as mementos. I looked in my grandmother's basket and there must have been 100 buttons! Some loose, and some on cardboard backings that they were packaged in for sale! And bingo! Some red ones! The packaging must be 50 years old. The price of buttons now is much more than 40 cents for three buttons. As a matter of fact, it looks like the price of 40 cents may have been reduced to 14 cents! What a deal!
So with my treasures in hand, I went downstairs and retrieved a little round doily that my grandmother had crocheted for me and gingerly placed the buttons on it. The doily has faded from its original white/cream to a beige-ish, and it worked perfectly with my color scheme.
So, I accomplished more than taking my daily picture. I had a little trip down memory lane, looking at my grandma's sewing basket, with some threaded needles still affixed to the upholstered top of the basket...just as she had left them. It was nice to stop and just think about one of my favorite people.
I got this shell many years ago. I don't even remember where, but I just loved all of the intricate designs between the ridges, and the little pearl-like tip. It's nice to be able to photograph things from around my house in this challenge, instead of going driving, often for many miles, to find subjects to shoot.
I'm so excited I got to take a picture of my tiny basket! This little (about 2 - 2 1/2" in diameter) Navajo basket was given to me many years ago by a co-worker, when I was a college student working part-time in a medical office. She was an older woman who was delighted that I was studying Anthropology and had done a dig and some survey work in the American Southwest area, where the Navajo reservation is located, and she wanted to pass along this basket that she, too, had been given many years prior. It's got to be at least 50 - 60 years old based on what I know. It's a lovely memento that has followed me in many moves and I treasure it. It's in front of a larger basket that I use frequently for serving breads/rolls/chips at parties. Both are important to me in obviously different ways.
When I went to the store last night to look for some vegetables, I was thinking of something like corn for my color scheme (yep, Marga), which I bought. As I was walking down the produce area, I saw the beets, and the produce department staff had cut some of the beets to show the patterns on the inside, so I got the idea to do some beets, cut to show their circles, but of course you don't know when you buy a beet what kind of pattern it will have inside. So I bought one red beet and one golden beet and kept my fingers crossed.
I didn't want to do slices with rings, since I'd already done circles one day this month, the round eyeball was yesterday, and my round apple stack was the day before. So I decided to see what would happen if I cut my beets into cubes. The first one was the golden beet, and I was disappointed at the lack of major color differentiation. A picture of just that beet cube would be boring. So I tried the red beet. Imagine my delight to see all sorts of different patterns on the different sides of the cube! Looking at them, they looked like tie-dyed cubes!
Still not sure if my cubes would make a decent picture, I did do a photo of fresh corn with melting butter on it as well, which came out mouth-wateringly good. Unsure of which to post, I asked my tactful hubby, who basically liked them both, but said the beets were more different and unexpected. So, today's vegetable photo is my tie-dye beets!
Oh, and since I only bought 2 beets and cut most of the beet away to get decent cubes, they ended up in the trash, but dinner tonight will definitely feature corn-on-the-cob, since I bought 4 ears of that!
I tried to think of all sorts of creative things to do with an eye. But unlike a contest where you have a week to cogitate and shoot and reshoot, I only had part of a day (went golfing the other part...I should have stuck to the photography, I think). Anyway at 12:00 a.m. I told my son I needed to borrow his snake to try for a snake eye photo. The normally docile snake didn't want to be still, and I had my macro lens on. I even put the snake on my left arm figuring it would go to sleep as usual and I'd just use my pre-focused camera in my right hand and move it closer or farther from the snake on my arm to take a shot of its eye. That was a dismal failure. The snake was afraid of the camera 2" from its face. So it moved its head behind my arm and started slithering around my arm. So I'm holding my arm up and maneuvering my camera around trying to just get it close to the snake and see what I could get. No luck. A lot of out of focus pics of the snake, and few even had its head in the shot...
Plan B....called my son over, told him about his non-compliant snake and asked if I could just take a few pics of his eye, also in the horrible light you find in your house at 12:15 a.m. So standing under a recessed light in the hall ceiling, with him looking up toward (but not at) it, I took some shots of my son's eye. BORING.... and bad. So I played with filters in the middle of the night and came up with this. Not particularly inspired, but he does have beautiful eyes.
Eye'm done!
I've always wanted to try this, but like a lot of things I see that I want to try, I never get around to it unless there is a reason, like a contest or a challenge. I have always liked these stacked fruits, or vegetables, and didn't think it would be that hard to do. WRONG! While it's not as hard as other things, it is nevertheless confounding to take four apples selected for similar size, slice them, and have them come together into a stacked apple without a lot of trial and error, and a whole lot of slices lying around in lemon water (to prevent the slices from turning brown). One might think that I could get four stacked apples from my various slices. But no..... it doesn't seem to work like that. I got this one, which was the best, and another shorter one. After that, the slice sizes just didn't work together at all. As soon as I finish posting this, this prop will have the same fate as my prior food props. LUNCH!! Dipped in some peanut butter! Yum!
Motion Blur. So many things that can be done with motion blur. I did one outside early this morning (2 a.m.), and motion blurred a skyline that I can see from my house. A lot of colorful lines, very abstract. No way could you tell what it was. I wanted to try something more identifiable, but didn't want to stray far from home, since I'd been out all morning. So, as I was putting some dishes away, this idea came to me.
I have a butcher block kitchen island. I also have a lot of sun that streams in. I tried lots of angles around the island, but it seemed no matter what I did, my hand was in the way of the subject if I could get the lighting right. Overhead lighting didn't help; it made matters worse. So I did what any person determined to get the shot does. I switched hands. With a big, sharp knife! Shot after shot, click the self timer with my left hand while holding the carrot with my right hand, grab the knife with non-dominant left hand and attempt to position and move it properly. I am embarrassed to tell you how many shots I took with the stupid knife upside down, sharp edge up because I just grabbed it in the 2 seconds and tried to get it into position for the shot. And repetition doesn't help. If you're no good with your left hand, it doesn't get better the more you try it, and the more frustrated you become.
But, I was happy to have gotten this shot, which has the knife in the correct edge orientation (down!), and even includes in the field of view the arc of the knife edge coming down. I'm guessing the vertical reflection of the carrot comes from the repeated up-and-down chops of the knife in the 2 second exposure.
Outtake shot of the abstract city skyline from earlier today:
The skyline is a 2 1/2 second exposure looking from my backyard out to a skyline of 6-8 tall buildings in the background and tilting the camera up during the exposure. The foreground lines are from street lights located in the housing development between my house and the tall buildings (which are about 1 mile away).
I have five birch trees outside my house. I love how their bark cracks, spreads, and forms little stripes (stretch marks?). I have other trees too, but their bark is 'just' brown. I took several shots of just a birch trunk, but it looked very strange, as if over-sharpened, over-contrasted, and out-of-focus when it wasn't. But that's really how it looks up close and personal. I found one tree had some ficus vines starting to grow up the trunk, escapees from the ficus mat covering one of our walls, so I decided that the ficus would make a good comparison in many ways - for size, for focus and depth, and, of course, it would give me that bit of green and red-orange needed to make the image pop a bit more.
Today was a super busy day, with my being gone all morning, part of the afternoon, and the evening. I came home between appointments, as the sun was starting to set, grabbed an orange off my miniature orange tree (no kidding!), and since it was so ripe, I decided to try this idea. It was a fast shot as the sun was shading my front patio, and I was just able to get the shot before it got too dark. I was hoping juice would go up the straw, but no such luck and I didn't have time to "arrange" that. Then off to the next engagement, a surprise birthday dinner party for a dear friend. Now I'm back home and just getting the picture posted at the end of the day. Whew!
Oh, and after the shoot, I did, once again, eat my prop... (only the orange, thank you), and it was as juicy on the inside as it was on the outside.
Today I pay homage to SecretAtlantis. Aside from urging me to try to maintain a generalized color scheme, she has been doing many rain-related images. We haven't had enough rain to get beautiful rain-streaked windows with appropriate daily subjects so far, but I solved that problem! I posed today's subject bottle (of canola oil, if you must know) behind my rain glass shower door! Here's to you, Marga!
** While this does look like an abstract painted with a palette knife, it's better viewed sitting back from your monitor. ;)
Rather than doing water drop splashes, which I just figured I would do when we made the list, I decided to be a little different. It's still liquid, but this time it's food coloring floating in the water. I'd seen the basic premise for this done before, but had not tried it. I love the shapes that the food coloring makes in the water as it dissipates.
Oh, and for those of you who commented to me that you thought I'd do a water drop, well, I whipped out a quick one.... actually the first time I've tried doing a splash in a wine glass. Here's a bonus picture:
We've actually had rain for the last two days! Not enough to end our drought, but enough to make the ground wet, and knock a bunch of leaves off of the trees. There is a lull this morning, so I went out and shook some branches....... ;) Actually I had to bring the leaf in to dry it, as the water was causing all sorts of glare.
When is the last time you received a gift from a bank? In a fancy, decorated metal container? Well, I don't remember either! This metal box, embossed with the Bank of America logo has been in the back of one of my drawers for I-don't-know-how-many years, where it holds a stash of small trinkets. Suffice it to say I haven't banked at Bank of America in at least 25 years! ("At least" being the operative words....)
Shoelaces on hiking boots are about all we have around here that show any color. I don't think this will be very original, but at least it has texture! And it sort of fits in with my color scheme, but then again, I guess most hiking boots would...
This is part of the cover art of a coffee table book I was given for a birthday present. Not that I was ever a total flower child, but I guess I did have my moments. The book itself is quite interesting as it traces the late 60's - the music, the events, the counterculture movement. Written by Barry Miles, it's a blast from the past!
Yeah, I know it's sort of a copout insofar as photographic artistry on my part, but I liked the graphics of the book cover, the colors worked, and it was a quick one (I've spent too much time on the last few days' entries). Tomorrow's will have to be more artistic, considering the subject.
We picked candy as a daily subject because we thought it would be fairly easy. And it is, sort of, since it's easy to find, there's a lot of variety, most people have it handy. What I didn't consider was composition. Candy in a dish is not so bad if you have colorful candy and a nice dish. Candy outside of a dish, on its own....a bit harder. Food styling is not my forte and I struggled with this. I originally was going to use two of the Ghirardelli squares, with one broken to allow the raspberry center to spill out. But try as I might, no matter what angle I placed the piece on top of the whole square, I couldn't get it to look compelling on its own. Then handling them caused some issues, so sadly some of the pieces had to be retired. To my stomach. Then browns.... the list goes on and on. I raided a box of candy we were given as a gift for some taller pieces to fill in the composition and remembered I still had some of my Pi raspberries left over, so they got pulled in, too, since they echoed the inside of the chocolate squares.
I'm sort of happy with the composition, though it could be tweaked further. I used natural light, coming in over my right shoulder as I took the picture, and the shadow on the rear piece of candy on the left seems a bit strong. But, it is what it is.....too much time devoted today already.
Thanks for any comments, suggestions, tweaks....
I set out to find something simple, and maybe a bit different, to show a candle. I found a floating candle in the drawer, but what to float it in? Deciding to try to stick with the color scheme I've been developing (thank you, Marga...yes, really, at least so far...) I looked for a vessel that would show some color since the candle itself is a very pale cream color. I found a plain glass vase, and filled it with water to which I added some food coloring. I backlit the shot and placed some tissue paper behind my white acrylic board that I use for my water drop shots to give it the beigy-yellowy color. It works!
Oh, and I was so surprised to see in all the shots I took that the candle flame reflected on the glass in the opposite direction. No, there were not two flames, just the one reflected, but it was a nice surprise.
I tried this once, several years ago, with fairly mediocre results, so decided I'd try it again for this challenge. The hardest part was getting those circles close enough together to make a decent composition in a limited field of view without them merging into each other and making a giant circle. I was surprised to see that the smaller the circles, the more clear the definition from the colored pattern showed up; the larger circles really have no pattern showing at all.
Oh my, oh my, oh my...... while trying to respond to Marga's implied challenge to keep the same color scheme for the first row of my poster, I tried to figure out how to get silverware to tie in with the yellow-beige-reddish color palette my first four days. A reflection was the only answer, since silverware is, well, silver (take note, MadamMtnLion).
I dutifully hunted for something in the appropriate colors to reflect onto the silverware, and after digging through boxes of gift wrapping materials, came up with a gift bag which had various ocean-themed shapes, but with the right colors. So I trudged down to the garage to take some pictures with my trusty old macro lens.
When I came upstairs to see how the images looked, check focus, lighting, reflections, etc. I saw a Skype message from Eurydice wondering how I was doing on my daily shot. She mentioned that she had been late in doing hers. I did a quick reply saying I'd just come upstairs to check my memory card to see if I was on the right track. I decided to check hers out.
ACK!!!! My exact written response to her on Skype was "CRAP!!!!!! Yours and mine are the same idea!!!" What are the odds of that?
So, rather than try to find another idea for silverware, here is my interpretation of a reflection on the back of a spoon.
Bottom line...we did not discuss, confer, collaborate, conspire or otherwise plan on the same idea for this day's shot. Just lucky, I guess. :)
Groan, I know... Sorry, I just couldn't help myself. I've always wanted to do this. There, it's out of my system now. Meanwhile, I'm loving looking at all of the wonderful serious art being posted. :)
I'm sure my husband would love to have a TV this zoomed size in the family room! I tried about 20 shots, over various TV channels, until I actually managed to zoom a shot of a static image that was part of a commercial. It took about 3 tries during that commercial to get the zoom even, and the car in fairly decent focus. After I finished, I realized I could probably have paused the picture. But that would have been too easy... Anyway, it's a hand-held zoom with my 24-105 lens for 1.6 seconds.
Hunting rust....... sometimes hard! Aside from a few bolts, it was hard to find anything rusty around here. "Around here" is a whole new concept for me in these 30-day challenges, since
I've tended to drive far and wide for prior challenges, and decided to
try to make it a bit easier this time around. So, here is my lucky find - a rusty spout of a watering can I saw by the garage. The rest of the watering can wasn't rusty at all - lucky I moved it and saw this side. Sadly though, it doesn't look like it would be very efficient anymore.
Popcorn is the subject for Day 1. When we made the list, we thought it would be a fun way to start the year, and it is! What do I think of when I think of popcorn? Movies, of course! So I decided to use the newspaper advertisement for The Theory of Everything as my background. But I haven't seen the movie yet, so now it's on my list to see.
