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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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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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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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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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Out of place
Let me tell you right at the beginning that this post was inspired by a comment my friend Linda made on the previous post. She mentioned that the flowers in the photo seemed out of place in that setting and that they provided such a bright spot of colour in an otherwise dreary setting. When I was reading that comment, the words “out of place” stood out from the text in my mind and I had to think about them. I saw them in capitals. I answered Linda that the flowers do seem out of place but at the same time, they belong there. They are placed at the side…
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Tagetes
Sometimes your eye catches a glimpse of something that subconsciously attracted your attention but at the moment you’re unable to say what exactly it was. It happened to me with these tagetes. There was something in that place that one day told me to stop and feel it and frankly, I just felt confused. It was a very strong perception. I came with a camera a day or two later, tried to capture the essence of that perception and got this result. It may not be easy to understand the photo and you may not like it but I want to share it anyway as for me, there is more…
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Moody buttons
I feel so much inspiration these days and will to turn that inspiration into something tangible, no matter how imperfect that might be… You know it. It’s uplifting to strive for perfection but it’s also tiring because one can never reach that destination. So when I was sorting the props I have for my still-life photography and their colours inspired me to arrange a few photos with a chrysanthemum I got a few days ago, though it was quite late (again) and first I wanted to postpone the idea to better time and better light, I changed my mind and started to play. These two final images are the ones,…
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Barn inspired
I guess everybody sometimes feels a sudden urge or need to do something particular, no matter what, and the last time I experienced that feeling was just yesterday when I got home from work. I felt a desperate need to go and create a still life image, and though I had just a vague idea about its contents, I knew I would bitterly regret if I dismissed that feeling. So I decided to answer the call and though it was already late afternoon, I went to explore our barn to find something interesting enough to shoot. I found a beautiful welding apron and ironwork on the barn’s door and added…
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Butter and eggs
I’m way behind with my Be-still-52 assignments but just before we went on holiday, I managed to fulfil an assignment asking us to create an image based on the prompt of “butter and eggs” and I took a series of photos. Before throwing myself into processing our holiday photos I wanted to complete that unfinished work and here I am with two final images I liked best. They are a bit different in several regards but as you can see, I used the same fried egg for creating them. Only one egg actually, it dawned on me much later that there were “eggs” in the prompt so one must do…
