Stress Patterns!

Today's still life subject is stress patterns, which show up in clear plastic items when sandwiched between two polarisers. I use a small lightbox with a piece of polarising film over the top, place the item on top and then fit a polariser to the camera lens.

My initial subjects were my trusty maths set, ruler, protractor and a couple of triangles. Then last night I rummaged through the cupboard looking for disposable tableware. Had hoped the cutlery I had was clear plastic, but sadly it was white, but I did find some bowls and wine glasses.

This is one of the bowls - awesome, a really funky shape to begin with and lots of colourful patterns showed up in it. The wine glass was less successful, too tall really to be useful. Also tried a carpet protector cup with some lovely nobbles on it and a clear case which holds a charity coin. Both of which produced some interesting photos.

All in all it's whiled away some of the day, both in shooting the images first and post editing.

Having fun with paper curls!

 To keep me busy during what is turning into a really cold day/night I've been playing with some paper curls up in the studio. Have done this sort of thing before, it's a camera magazine idea, but thought I'd have another go to while away a few hours with the camera and then the laptop.

Really pleased with the selection I whittled my 74 images down to, just shy of 20 images, and have picked this one to represent the batch. Thought this particular vantage point makes the shape of an eye, you can see the backdrop material behind it and the slightly brighter piece is from a peg holding the paper together.

Heavily processed in Lightroom, as usual, think this has morphed from the original Grandma's Lemonade preset into this final piece.

If nothing else the still life keeps me focused creatively whilst getting out and about is hampered by a) the weather and b) Lockdown 99 (or is that just what it feels like...)

Grumpy Old Git!

Took this photo yesterday whilst trying to snap a few images around the garden of this year's snowfall. Could take the camera out I guess but as I'm always fearful of falling over, trying to use the camera and walk with my trekking poles proves kinda difficult. So I satisfied myself with a trek up the garden path to see what I could find. And as it was bloody cold too I was keen not to keep me or the camera outside for too long 🥶📷

Found a few bits to inspire me, including some small icicles on the shed roof, but this little character that stands in my neighbours garden I thought looked rather cheeky, especially shooting it through the vignette of the fence trellis. I think his sign reads "Never Mind The Dog, Beware of The Owner!" But I always think of the statue as the Grumpy Old Git. Not a reflection of my neighbour I might add, who is sadly no longer with us. But it kinda sums up his love of the garden and of course dogs, most of which belonged technically to either his missus or the kids but he was always the one the dogs went to as he did the walking, feeding etc. So his love of animals nearly always got him lumbered with looking after other's animals when the novelty of looking after them wore off. 

As time moves on, which it inevitably does, I will look back at this photo and remember him. A very down to earth, totally WYSIWYG kind of bloke, no airs or graces, just a really nice person. And lets face it, right now it doesn't always seem like there are many people like that about nowadays.

Shoes

 

So this week's family photo challenge was Shoes. Having had a good think about what I could use, amongst other things like Julia's first pair of shoes, a pair of wooden clogs from Holland and a pair of wellies that were an 18th birthday cake decoration, I found this. It's kind of like an Aladdin's slipper and is a charm on a ready made bracelet that belonged to my Mum. Originally in a silver and gold mix metal and shot on a piece of shimmering teal blue and violet material I converted the image to black and white adding a simple tone to the monochrome image. Shot using a Canon 60mm macro lens which I am reacquainting myself with, had forgotten just how shallow the depth of field is when you are shooting in close.

Quite enjoying the family photo challenges albeit with a small break currently whilst Julia and James arrange some internet for their new house! Julia is the one with the bag of numbers which we use to pick our next subject ;-)

Playing with the Big Gun Lens!

Took this image from the bedroom window whilst playing with my big Tamron 70-300mm VC lens. Had forgotten how much fun it is as I mainly bought it for zoo visits and we haven't done one of those for ages! The VC control is awesome, freezing the image in the viewfinder, makes shooting with these long lenses much easier, especially as they are heavy to hold still!

Liked the sun just catching these last few leaves left on what is probably some bramble judging by the thorns. Normally I hate this plant, it seems to encroach everywhere you don't want it to be and it's virtually impossible to get rid of. There's a lot of it growing across the road in the borders to the open fields so probably spreads quite easily. But with the sun catching the yellow of the old leaves it looked quite golden. Cropped in Lightroom with a slight blue/orange colour grading added and a vignette along with a medium contrast tone curve added from Lightroom's built-in options. Finally created a new Export preset which adds a 60px simple white border with a single pixel outer border in 50% grey just to stop it blending into anything totally white. Reminds me of my old Polaroid snaps that used to pop out of the camera. Unfortunately Lightroom doesn't make a proper white border without rounded edges, disappointing by todays standards, so most borders need adding on Export and I use a plugin called Mogrify which allows all sorts of tweaks on Export, sizing and borders being just two of them. Normally I use this to create the usual 1px white border following by a 30px black border and again another final 1px 50% grey to prevent the black bleeding into anything black. 

If nothing else, these somewhat ad hoc spontaneous images help to keep my creativity going between chances to go out for a walk. Yesterday was hampered by waiting in for Mr Amazon to deliver a parcel which I thought I had requested to come today along with the rest of the order! Not quite sure why they see fit to override your preferences and deliver early, all on the same day is easier for them and easier for me! I did manage a brief walk around the streets though later in the day so at least got some much needed fresh air even if I missed out on a photo walk ;-) Hoping that as the weather improves and the evenings get lighter at least a regular daily walk might be back on the cards. That's assuming of course that we don't get snowed in over the next few days ⛄ 😱