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Gratitude
Amid these Christmas preparations I wanted to tell you that the other day, when I was coming home from work and was driving through a wood near our village, it struck me how much my life has changed recently. Partly from the outside and more importantly from the inside, but it’s all intertwined and interlinked, isn’t it? I wanted to add that there were times in my life a few years ago when crashing my car head-on into a tree seemed like a good solution to all the bad feelings and thoughts I had. I never tried, just let the idea in and out, but the depressive thought was there.…
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Beauty of the withered
When I was preparing props for my in-crate assignment about which you could read in my previous posts Autumn in the crate and Inspiring hydrangea, I gathered also some withered flowers from my garden and tried to set a few compositions with them. They might have not made it into the group of my favourite shots of that day but they made me think. About fading beauty, about a circle of life, about having (or not) a character. Withered doesn’t have to mean ugly, does it? In the course of this almost year long still-life experimenting, I’ve learnt that some photos carry a plain message but other can wear different coats and arise…
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Inspiring hydrangea
As I promised in the previous “Autumn in the crate” post, I’m going to present a different set of in-crate images today, this time with hydrangea. Even more different than I imagined because when I wanted to create a square-formatted image from my hydrangea-in-crate shots, I found out that all those shots were captured in too tight composition to do that successfully so I tried and set a similar scene for another shooting a week later. Well, as it happens, the newer photos do not look the same… Not only the sky was overcast that day and the light was very different, also perspective changed. But it was an interesting comparison for…
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Snowy
When I woke up on Sunday morning, the light felt different. I was wondering what was going on but as soon as I got up, I knew the answer. Everything behind the windows was covered with snow and its fresh white colour dominated surroundings of our house. Our garden, neighbours’ garden, our yard… I loved the occasional colourful contrast like in the following photo. Our neighbours across the road are building a new house and its unfinished condition looked wonderful against the snow. As soon as I saw it, I grabbed my camera, opened our kitchen window and took a few photos. I took some also from our dormer window…
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Thoughts on learning strategies
When you are learning something new, what’s your strategy? Do you mainly gather pieces of information, go through them quickly and then keep them in your laptop or (note)books for future reference or do you try and use them until you master them? Long time ago I realised that I belong to that first group of learners, I’m definitely a gatherer. Not of things but pieces of information. I have always been, since childhood. In this digital era I have plenty of files in my laptop containing articles on things like English grammar and vocabulary, photography techniques, Lightroom tips and manuals, Photoshop Elements tutorials… I enlarge my collection day by…
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Autumn in crate
Another assignment from the Be still 52 course was to find a crate or a box and experiment with things put on top of it or inside it, play with the light and shadow, try and turn the crate this way or that way… Kim even started in-crate and on-crate series and I find it to be a great idea. There truly are so many possibilities, in fact quite simple but appealing possibilities, and I find it mind-blowing just to think about them. As you can see in the image above, I started with “in crate” composition and because my shooting was inspired by cleaning that I was doing in…
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Autumnal apple inspiration
Apples belong to every season, perhaps with partial exception of spring, but I have them connected especially with autumn. Many of their varieties turn ripe at this time of year or need to be picked and stored. I’ve learnt quite recently that winter varieties need to be picked in autumn but can’t be eaten until some time of their storage passes, even two or three months, it surprised me. When we moved into our house in the village, there were several apple trees in the garden but all the apples could be eaten at the time of picking and I hadn’t known it could be different until we wanted to…
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Autumnal photo walk and its surprises
With its changing colours and soft light, autumn is such a special season and so many photographers speak about how eager they are not to miss out on taking some autumnal photos. That made me realize that I wouldn’t want to miss out on taking them either and asked my dear husband to go on a photo walk with me. I even had an idea in my mind where I’d like to go as a few months ago I noticed that in a near town a new educational trail “Living memories of Lužany landscape” was opened and it seemed a good destination for a Sunday morning walk. The trail is…
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How I created my still-life image of a faded rose
There are plenty of photos and images on the Internet and some of their authors generously share the process of creating them, the how-to manual for getting the results they achieved. I love those “recipes” and I’m always eager to have a look behind the scene. It’s enriching in so many ways. The basic processing may be quite similar but when it comes to feelings and reasoning, it becomes personal and inspiring. I’d like to add my contribution to that shared knowledge by showing you the process of creating one of my recent still-life images. The reason why this image came into existence was the fading beauty of that rose.…
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Back up your data
Do you make a backup of any work you do on your computer?Do you back up your data in such a way that you can’t easily lose them?Or do you just postpone and avoid that thinking it can wait until you have time for it? Back up, Back Up, BACK UP! Undoubtedly you’ve heard that priceless piece of advice many times and I would love to know how seriously you take it. I heard several stories of people I knew who were let down by their computer and lost all their data because they made no backup. No at all. And a while ago my colleague told me that she…
