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Birdhouses
Sometimes life is full of colours… …and sometimes it’s void of them… …but it’s always open to possibilities and creativity. Two weeks ago I visited the town Příbram and came across this interesting set of three birdhouses. They were situated quite high and behind a fence so I didn’t have much possibilities for finding the best angle for capturing them but I tried my best to get the gist of the scenery. I edited the photo but was not happy about the result. So I edited it more, highlighting the birdhouses, dodging and burning, adding textures to the background and deploying blend modes. I liked that result much more, I…
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Curious attraction
It is a curious feeling to be taking a photograph you expect no one else would like. It is a feeling, as though you were entering a universe that holds no attraction for potential visitors but for you. Yet you hear the calling and you can decide whether to follow it and perhaps seem foolish or ignore it and throw away expressing something deep inside you what might take you further. I love this great adventure of photography teaching me to be myself, to look at the world around me through my own eyes, and to go deeper than to the longing to create something everyone would admire.
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My photo project for 2021
As a photographer, I find photo projects to be a wonderful way of exploring both the world around us and the photography itself. I completed several photo projects I had assigned to myself but last two years I didn’t have any and I missed it. I need something to push and pull me forward, something palpable and particular, which is exactly what such a project can offer. I wasn’t quite sure what the new project should focus on and the solution eventually came as a surprise. Do you believe that if you seek something, new doors open and new paths are unveiled? Only after setting off, possibilities present themselves. At…
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Curly leaf parsley
I thought the fresh curly leaf parsley that I grow in my garden would be good not only for cooking but it could also look good in still life photography. So here it is, in two versions of a still life image. Two images, two different stories despite almost the same contents. The power of editing is awesome… By the way, as for the cooking, I add curly leaf parsley to soups, potatoes and stuffing, it adds “a breath of nature” and tastes good!
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Peony magic
The tree Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa) that we have in our garden does not look great this year. The weather has been enormously dry this spring and the leaves of the bush are partly dry as well. Also the buds and flowers have been fading quickly. My son noticed yesterday that one of the lower growing branches was broken so I cut it off entirely and put into a little vase at home. It looked tempting to be captured and eventually I used it and another even more faded flower for my still life photography. Funnily enough, I ended up with quite a different photo than I started with… Isn’t the…
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Focus propriety
The other day I was taking photos of some of my succulents, playing with both composition and focus. In the triptych below I put together three versions of one of the photos. When I showed the photos to my husband, he told me that in his opinion, the focus must definitely be on the succulent as it is the main subject in the photo. He evaluated the first version with the sharp ribbon and blurred succulent as utterly bad. I thought about it a lot but although I respect the opinion, I don’t quite see eye to eye with him on the matter. We put the focus where we want…
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Build up when creating your art
I make the same mistake all over on my photography path. I always want and almost expect to get my camera out, take a photo and be a witness to how great an image I created. Stupid, right? It happens here and there that the first photo is good, sometimes better than the following ones but much more often I need to start somewhere, immerse myself in the photography mood and build up. The same applies to editing. I edit a photo or two and don’t like any of that, but the process may give me an idea for editing an absolutely different photo. Like in case of this lawn…
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Table, bird and roses
I had my birthday a few weeks ago. When my husband asked what kind of present I would like to get, I told him I would have a special wish, which was to find or create a place in our house that would give me some free space for taking still-life photographs. I was fed up with using the kitchen table or living-room table and floors of all kinds, all of that not quite suitable for taking photos. I used to have a small makeshift table in one of the rooms but now our treadmill is placed there and it doesn’t fit anywhere else. I also used to have an…
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Formats and negative space
The other day I took a few photos in our village and I loved especially the following one: The portrait format brought the rippled water with reflections of the clouds into the picture, thus creating a valued negative space adding to the main contents. Then I thought, “well, I’d like to post this photo on my blog so now I need a landscape version to place it as the featured photo of the post”. I cropped the photo, setting the bank of the pond somewhat higher above the middle, leaving just a bit of that precious negative space in the picture. And finally, I thought “this would be a nice…
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Still-life sunflowers
When the left part of your brain is tired of all the thinking and planning and worrying, it might help to leave it to its own destiny and ask the right creative part to work miracles. The miracles may not be that awesome as you might wish them to be but they have their own rhythm, their own life. What about allowing them to pull you into their flow of vision and imagination? There are so many smaller and greater ways how to be creative. Last year my son wanted to plant sunflowers so we bought some seeds and waited whether they would grow. They did and they looked great…
