Project 365
A Bit of a Catch-Up
I wanted to do a bit of a catch-up and go through my recent Project 365 images. I’ll go through them in order starting with…
27th Feb 09
We’ve been looking at wedding venues recently and Wirral Town Hall was one of the places we had been considering. Becky organised a visit so we went along to take a look (and naturally, my camera came too!)
There were some impressive rooms upstairs, but not sure if the venue is right for what we want. The grand staircase in the photo greets you as you walk up the main hall from the front entrance.
There was a mix of lighting in the room, but a lot of it was fairly low level. I didn’t have my tripod so had to bump the ISO up a bit to get a shot. I played around with the white balance a bit to get a warmth that I liked. I wanted to capture the symmetry of the staircase and framed the shot with those lines in mind.
28th Feb 09
On Saturday, it was a bit of a last minute effort to grab a shot. Got up fairly late and then went shopping in the afternoon. In the evening we were out with friends and didn’t get home until really late. I needed something that I could shoot quickly before I went to bed.
Becky had bought some beads whilst we were out shopping, to wear at the christening we were going to the next day. I grabbed those and put them on a white background - I’ve got the background and a light stand set up in the spare bedroom for this sort of shot.
I tried positioning the beads to make them look a bit more interesting and liked this wavy pattern the best. It was lit with a low umbrella from the side because a single light point on beads or pearls helps them to look more rounded. A macro lens would have been ideal for a shot like this but, since I don’t have one, I used my wide lens as it has a fairly short focus distance. If you look closely at the beads, you can see me in them.
A Basket Case
26th Feb 09
I’ve always been a fan of shots that bring out the texture of the materials in the image. Mostly, they work really well as a black and white images.
Originally, I was going to shoot something different for today’s image but, as I was hunting in the under stairs cupboard for something that I needed, I spotted a woven shopping basket that I’d forgotten we had. I liked the texture of the weave and the bright colours, so I decided to shoot that instead.
I lit it with an umbrella, positioned to one side of the basket. I feathered the light coming in from the side to try to get an even illumination, whilst the side lighting also picked up the texture of the basket. For the final image, I just boosted the colours and contrast a little during processing.
Danger! High Voltage!
25th Feb 09
Whenever I see signs like that, it always reminds me of the song from Electric Six.
I saw the subject of today’s image near the car park that I use for work. I was intrigued by the number of warning signs, so I went over for a closer look (note to warning sign fitters: if you want people to keep away from something, don’t plaster it with warnings because it makes it look more interesting).
I liked the old industrial look of it, with the (seemingly broken) analogue dial on the front and the imposing nature of the warnings. I shot it from a lower angle to make it look more imposing and also to create a nice angle with brickwork. I wanted to really highlight the danger signs so went for a selective colour approach and gave the b&w a high contrast. The signs were all different shades of yellow/orange so I hue-shifted them all to a bright yellow.
The resulting image gives the impression of danger both from the warning signs and from the yellow and black colour scheme.
Pancake Day
24th Feb 09
Since it is Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) in the UK, I thought it would be a good idea to theme today’s Project 365 entry around that.
The pancakes were made by my other half, Becky, and enjoyed with some maple syrup and lemon juice. I also had one with Nutella as it would be rude not to!
The one for the photograph was made with the last of the mixture and then left to go cold for a while. The idea was to get a picture, using shallow focus, of the pancake with maple syrup drizzled on it. I tried a few shots with the pancake open, but it wasn’t really working as an image. I folded the pancake to see if that looked any better, but there was still something missing. I decided to drizzle some of the syrup around the plate to make the background a bit more interesting and that got me the image I was looking for.
