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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…
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Along the path of blogging
UPDATE: I wrote this post on my Blogger blog before coming to this WordPress website a year later so its contents are not relevant to what I have now. Yet I decided to keep the post here as it shows the history of my blogging and where it took me. I started my first blog about fifteen years ago on the Yahoo platform for the sole purpose of learning English and keeping in touch with my online teacher. Slowly but continuously the blog was getting a new face and finally I was sharing photos I took and thoughts I was pondering over. Then Yahoo came with the announcement that it would…
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Inspiring tablecloth
The other day I was shopping and spotted a tablecloth in sale which caught my eye. A few moments later I was leaving the shop happy about buying a new prop for my photography, expecting to use it sooner or later. Surprisingly, it took just a few days… When I brought home the hydrangea I mentioned in one of my previous posts, it felt like a nice combination with the tablecloth. The lace is part of the tablecloth and it’s beautifully contrasting to the linen material the tablecloth is made of. I added a few matching buttons and experimented for a while with perspective, arrangement and depth of field and…
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SOOS abstraction
Do you wonder what I’m getting at with the title of this post? I hope so… Read on and you will see. Photos presented in this post were taken at and inspired by SOOS, a national nature reserve that is situated just a few kilometres from Františkovy Lázně, the spa I wrote about in my last post. SOOS is a peat bog and fenland area that was declared the reserve in 1964. You can get to know part of it by following a 1,2 kilometres long nature trail that takes you through the reserve and lets you see some of its marvels. The trail goes across a dry lake bed…
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Vessel, flower and string
Time for another assignment from the Be still 52 course I’ve been participating in. The assignment was to grab a bottle or some sort of vessel, a flower and some string, hang the vessel and take a be-still photo. I didn’t have any suitable bottle available so I took a jar and I think it served its purpose well enough. It felt just like another start and I would like to try it again, differently. So many possibilities… It’s a great exercise when it comes to practising the “right” depth of field, which is very subjective here but enormously important.
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Františkovy Lázně
About 15 years ago we spent our holiday in the spa Františkovy Lázně which is situated in Western Bohemia near the border with Germany. We were accommodated in a cabin in a camp called “Amerika”, which is situated at the outskirts of the town, and made trips in the town’s surroundings both in Bohemia and Germany. We liked that holiday and this year we decided to return to that camp for a few days and revisit some of the places, starting with the spa itself. It’s a small town but it’s quite impressive. After our arrival and checking in, we spent the afternoon in the town, walking in its streets…
