A Week In Project 365

Time for another round up of the most recent Project 365 images…

I started the week off with this abstract shot, which is actually part of the ceiling outside of the office where I work. The have recently refurbished the area outside of the office with new decor and a new raised section to the ceiling.

The raised section contains a number of concealed lights and is viewed through a curved aperture in the original ceiling. I thought that the curves and lighting would make an interesting abstract image. The lights give the image some depth and also a nice range of tones. The ceiling is actually white, but I selected a white balance and exposure to give it a darker, warmer look.

On Tuesday, I shot these boxes that Becky got at Christmas. They were originally full of various sweets and cakes, but those were soon eaten! I liked the contrasting colours of the black and cyan and thought it would look good on a black background.

I’m using a roll of black paper for the background, which isn’t really dark enough to get a nice deep black without the aid of some photoshop. To help this, I had to try and keep as much light off the background as possible. Lighting from the side, as in this shot, helps keep the background dark. I positioned the boxes to take advantage of the single side light, giving them some depth in the final image. In processing, I had to be careful that I didn’t lose the ribbon against the black background. Making sure some light hit the bow at the top of the boxes helped to keep it visible.

Becky has been into baking cakes recently, which I took advantage of for Wednesday’s image. These pecan and cinnamon muffins had just come out of the oven. A shallow focus seems to be popular in food photography these days, hence my decision to use it here. I went for a low angle to ensure I could fill the frame with muffins and avoid having to tidy that part of the kitchen

They were positioned near a window, but mostly lit by a flash bounced off to the side. I wanted to get a warm feeling to the image, which was done by altering the colour temperature a bit when processing the images. The muffins were very tasty.

Continuing with the food theme on Thursday, I did a shot of my favourite Lemon & Lime marmalade. I got the idea for this image when I was getting something out of the fridge and noticed the jar sitting in front of the fridge light. I thought I would replicate this by backlighting the marmalade against a white background.

The background is actually a shoot through umbrella with the jar positioned between 2 of the spokes. The light coming through the jar was enough to illuminate the label on the front, without having to use any additional front lighting. This avoided having to deal with any reflections that front lighting would have caused on the jar. I went for an off centre composition, partly because it was a more interesting image than a straight on shot of the jar and partly to hide that we had eaten some of the marmalade.

Friday’s image was one that I had been thinking of doing for a while. Our fridge door is fairly colourful, in a haphazard way, due to all of the different fridge magnets we have stuck to it. The touristy ones can make us seem as though we are well travelled, but they were all gifts from other people’s holidays. Some of them show phone numbers for vital services (like electricity or pizza) and others are just reminders or ‘amusing’ quotes.

I was originally going to shoot the door in a portrait orientation with the fridge magnets in their original positions, but it all looked a bit spread out. Instead, I decided to just shoot part of the door and put all of the magnets into that area. To light it, I had to bounce a flash off to the side to avoid getting hot spots on the door from the top of the flash. The problem with this was that one of the edges of the door was a bit bright and the other was a bit dark. On the dark side, I wedged a reflector between the fridge and the cupboard next to it. One the bright side, I opened a cupboard door to cast a bit of shadow over the edge. This gave me fairly even lighting across the door. I boosted the saturation and contrast a little in processing to make the magnets stand out a bit better.

Saturday’s image was decided on due to the events of the day. I’ve been a fan of Liverpool for as long as I can remember (and probably even before that). Manchester United have been our biggest rivals over the past few years so the games against or north west neighbours have that extra significance put on them. Liverpool’s 4-1 victory marked the first time we’d beaten them home and away since the 2001/02 season and our biggest win at their ground since 1936! When I’d stopped dancing around like a loon, I took this shot of the embroidered badge off the current away shirt. I used a soft light, off to the side, to pick up the texture of the badge and the background material of the shirt.

To complete the round-up is Sunday’s detail image of my skateboard. I bought the board (and some pads) last year with the intent of getting back into skating again. I soon realised that my fitness levels these days weren’t up to the task and it was put away until I could make full use of my gym membership.

Even though it is not being used it still makes an interesting subject, I shot this image of the deck against the wall in our back yard. I used just natural light, which was coming in from the side. I wanted to get in close to create an almost abstract image from the angles of the board, wall, trucks and wheels. I boosted the contrast and saturation during processing as I wanted to have a bit of a retro feel to the image. For those interested in such things, the deck is from the Element Thriftwood range with MOB griptape. The trucks are Independent Lows with Coretech Photon 54mm wheels and Destructo Sendai bearings.