Concept



This year I will be mostly... taking a photo every day, and posting it up here for you all to see and comment on if you feel inclined (please do). It's not an original idea, I stole it off a friend and many other people are doing the same as I speak, but I thought it seemed like a great idea to get used to my new toy, my Canon Eos 500D with Tamron 18-250mm Macro lens - my first digital SLR.

A lot of sites online talk about 'project 365' where people are encouraged to take a photo every day, but while their take on it is to create a personal history of the photographer, I wanted to make it a bit more abstract, more about the world around me. So this isn't meant to be a photo diary of my life, I am striving for each photo to be 'good' because of its artistic and technical merit, not because it's personal to me. Having said that personal subject matter will inevitably creep in as inspiration, but that's allowed, the book I'm reading claim that "every picture we take is merely a self-portrait of our inner psyche"!

I had a think of a couple of ideas for themes and settled on 'moods'. Then I was hit by indecision as to what to do if I take a photo I like and want to upload as my daily snap, but it doesn't fit the theme. So I have decided that the theme is just for inspiration rather than as a criteria, the photos can be of anything. That way I get the most flexibility of what to upload, and still have a muse.

While I'll be taking photos every day, I'll only upload them every few days, so keep checking back. I'm not anticipating the photos to be groundbreaking (at least not to start with!), the whole point is to improve so I won't be great initially. But I'll still try my best which will hopefully keep it interesting. Please feel free to add whatever comments you like (hopefully constructive!) as that will help me as much as the process of actually taking a photo a day, I will endeavour to reply to them all.

For my trip reports blog see http://fidgetsadventures.blogspot.com


Sunday 23 January 2011

Friday 21st January 2011

Today I wanted to re-visit the park where I took this. I still didn't make it to the lake as I got waylaid by a shower of frost continuously falling from trees (which was stunning given that there wasn't any wind), and while wandering up to them I saw this ice studded weed glinting in the light. With the 20 minutes I had left before I had to return to work, I snapping it from as many angles as I could without getting my feet too wet, hoping that at least one of them would turn out okay. I was experimenting with specular highlights by trying to turn the background sun into a out-of-focus perfect circle, although it didn't seem to be working so I quickly gave up and carried on just snapping. However when I viewed the photos on my computer I saw that I *had* got specular highlights on various of the photos where the sun was reflecting off the chunks of ice and frost all around - see the colourful circles across the top of the photo.


77mm, 1/800s (auto from aperture priority), f/5.0, ISO 100

7 comments:

  1. Great lighting effects in the background.

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  2. Mostly accidental but I'll know how next time. It's all a learning curve. I love this photo though!

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  3. It is an amazing photo! Love it.

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  4. I'm not sure what "specular highlights" are but its very pretty!

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  5. I'm never quite sure what level to write at in my captions. I want to include the technical details to encourage feedback from more experienced photographers, but not sure whether to include an explanation of terms for this that won't know what they mean. I don't want to seem exclusive or talk over anyone's heads, but likewise I don't want to patronise anyone or assume they want me (who's only a beginner herself) to educate them). So far I've left off explanatory text if only to restrict the size of my captions and stop them getting verbose, but if you'd like to know what the terms mean just let me know and I'll add explanations.

    Specular highlights occur when you're taking a close up or something, and out of focus light sources in the background appear as either either perfect circles of lighter colour (if you had your aperture - the hole in the front of the lens - fully open as I did), or as hexagons of lighter colour if you have your aperture "stopped down", i.e. reduced in size. Hope that makes sense!

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  6. This is still my favourite shot that you've shot thus far :-D
    This is certainly a type of shot that you need to revisit.
    Technically, its spot on: the only issue is the other stem tends to lead the eye out of the frame.
    There is something inherently 'nostalgic' about this colour palate...

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  7. Ace thanks, and cheers for bringing me back to view this again.

    I cropped some off that twig on the right but hadn't realised it was still distracting.

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