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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…
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Phone booth
Today I would like to share two photos, both of which I took in a small town Stříbro. There are not many phone booths remaining here these days with all the affordable mobile phones, yet here and there you can meet some. I felt attracted to this one as soon as I saw it and I wanted to incorporate it into capturing the place. As a result I got two quite different photographs. I was standing at spots just a few steps apart, only turned a bit more to the left or to the right. I also used different light when sun showed its face here and there. I have…
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Scrapyard inspiration
When shooting photos in a scrapyard for the theme “Rusty” in my photo-project in 2017, I took a photo that I found quite simple and yet intriguing. Several corrugated sheets were lying on the ground among other scrap and sharp sunny light painted lines on the top sheet. I saw a potential in that geometry but after editing the photo for a while I abandoned it, dissatisfied with my results. Today I came across the photo again and decided to give it a second chance by creatively playing with it. I can tell you, I’m glad I did. To start with, I created a black&white version… … and here is…
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Good photo or bad
Sometimes opinions about a photo can differ quite a lot. Let’s take the following photograph. When I asked my husband to give me his opinion on the photo, he told me that it’s just yellow, no more added value. He didn’t find anything interesting in it worthy of looking twice at it. On the other hand, I keep returning to the photo. Well, I took it, so I may not be unbiased at all, but it doesn’t change the fact that I feel attracted to it. Is it because it was I who made those decisions on choosing the scene, selecting the crop, highlighting the yellow? At the site, I…
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Pink inspired (again)
Here and there I buy a small bunch of flowers to decorate my kitchen for a few days and the other day I chose pink roses. They looked fresh and fragile and I loved them but just after two days their stems bent down and the flowers were fading almost in front of my eyes. Of course I felt disappointed but I grabbed them, grabbed my camera and spent an hour or two playing with them in my photographs. The disappointment transformed into creativity, what an unexpected development. Here is the result of that pink inspiration…
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Pink hen and flowers
A few weeks ago, when I was thinking about what kind of photos I would like to focus on this year, I was thinking about returning to still life and its creativity. A few days ago, when I was thinking about spring and Easter, I was thinking about creating something playful and joyful and yet a bit serious. So here is my little playful yet thoughtful still-life variation featuring a figure of a hen I bought once as a prop. – In a whirl of events – – Waiting for a decision – – Devoted – – Lost in thought on a sunny day – – Lost in expectation –
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Lovely monster
As a photographer, I’ve learned one really important thing about taking photographs. Use your brain and think about what you want to photograph but also listen to your guts what they tell you. Here and there it happens to me that I notice something and feel the charge right away but I don’t see the result. I used to dismiss such perceptions… Don’t do that, go where it speaks to you no matter how commonplace it may seem, and pay attention. An old agricultural building that spoke to me when passing it in a car brought me to creating the image below. I love it and I’m happy I seized…
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Coffee to go
My hubby bought a cup of coffee, put it aside to take some photos of the café and left me alone with the cup. I like coffee but this time taking a photo seemed to be a much better idea than taking a sip…
