Project52 - Week Three: Books

Yet again, this week's photo isn't what I intended at the start of the week. Initially I thought I was going to do another portrait, but seeing as I did one last week and it was a bit too sunny for what I wanted, I decided to do some product photography instead. I was kind of lazy and decided to leave it until Saturday, when I realised the idea I had wasn't going to work, so I had to come up with something quickly - which was this. I've had this idea in my head for a while - I just love the different colours in the HP children's covers and I thought it would be fun to exemplify them against a white background. Admittedly, it's not particularly original, but I like it. I shot it using my DIY photo box, but since I'd used it last it had kind of disintegrated a bit, plus I couldn't use the lamp I normally use. Having said that, I still got what I thought was a nice photo and figured I'd fix the rest in Photoshop.

The first thing I did was fix the white balance and crop it in Lightroom. I then took it into PS and did lots of playing round with the curves. I wanted the colours to be bright, but the background white, so I crushed both the whites and blacks. The only issue with this was that because my hardcovers have covers on them, they reflected and faded out, so I used the quick selection tool to do separate curves adjustments for those. There's still a few funny spots, but overall I'm happy.

Hopefully this will be the last of the (more or less) random shots - I really want to choose a theme and plan things out more than I have been, so that's my aim for next week.

Project52 - Week Two: Sisters

I didn't have much time for photo taking this week - hot weather early in the week meant that most of my time was spent either in the pool or reading Twilight. I haven't put my compact into it's underwater case yet - I really should do that to be ready for the chance to take photos in the pool. The rest of the week was mostly split between preparing bits and pieces for my best friends' engagement party, working... and reading more Twilight. I therefore decided to focus my photo thoughts towards Saturday night's party - hence the late posting.

I was asked to help with the family photos, which I was glad to do - I'm still learning what to look for and how to position people and the like for these sort of shots - I find them hard because personally I prefer more relaxed, spur-of-the-moment sort of photos (for example, as I was doing a speech one of my friends had my camera and got what I consider to be one of the best photos from the night). However, one I did love was this one of Courtney and Rhianna. The two of them just have these gorgeous smiles on their faces and they look so natural in front of the camera, lucky things! To me the photo feels almost like it could be out of a magazine. It was originally a much wider shot which I cropped down to a square (something I don't normally do, but in this case it just suited). I had to adjust the white balance and tone in Lightroom (then the levels in Photoshop) - the light wasn't spectacular, but luckily was really easily fixed. I also added additional lens blur in Photoshop - the not-particularly-outstanding background was too in focus for my liking (it's times like this I wish I had a portable background - one day!). I'm still not sure if it's too overdone, and I'm sure there's something else I could do to make it really outstanding, but I'm not sure what just yet. I'm sure this is a shot I'll revisit in the future.

Project52 - Week One: Dahlia

Believe it or not, this blog is being resurrected - hopefully for longer than a week! After being inspired by people undertaking 365 day photo projects last year (such as Katie Elizabeth who I found on Flickr) I decided to undertake a (slightly) less arduous version - Project52, where I take one photo a week and post it online. My main reason for only once a week is that I intend each week to spend a few hours on the week's photo - for example, I may choose a theme and do a photo shoot based around it, or research a new technique (whether in camera or in Photoshop) and attempt to implement it (and I still have a uni degree to complete, full time work to find and my current part time job among other things this year). I also intend to try and go out at least once a month and have a shoot somewhere that isn't home - though I am very lucky in that I have many possible photo locations at home due to living on six acres. My plan at the end of the year is to then put them all into a photobook to have a record of my year through my camera's lenses. Each week I'll post a photo and describe what I did in the hope that we can all improve and learn.

It was nice to discover January 1st that two of my friends, Bianca and Kiera, are completing Project365. You can see Kiera's work at http://shootingproject365.wordpress.com/ or on Flickr and Bianca's work on Flickr. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with each day!

Currently my photos are only posted here; I only have a free account on Flickr and the other day I decided to upload my recent photos seeing I hadn't updated since early in the year. I promptly forgot to leave room for January's photos, so you'll have to come here until February to see them.

This week's photo has been a case of happy mistakes, I suppose you could say. My intention was to take a black and white portrait under a particular tree that I've been eyeing off, however, I fell off my horse Tuesday morning (don't worry, not really hurt, just a sore shoulder) but that put paid to my plans for Tuesday, which meant I had to move Tuesday's to Wednesday (when I was going to do the shoot) and due to work and other commitments the only time I had to shoot was a few hours this morning. I don't think it's a bad thing as the place I have in mind would actually suit a shoot with a couple I think. (Any couples wanting a photo shoot let me know!) I therefore changed to something simple, being a close up shoot, but while I normally like to shoot the roses in our front garden, I decided this time to photograph a flower that had caught my eye the other day (and I have hence been informed by my mother it is a dahlia).

The photo is taken using a 50mm prime lens and Hoya +4 close up filter at f/2.2 at 1/4000 (in Av mode) plus I used my tripod and wireless release. This wasn't the most in-focus of the photos I took (due to the aperture and the wind) but I really liked the framing and the bee. One of the main issues I had was that the plant was right in front of our pool fence - while the pool made a nice background, the wire mesh fence certainly didn't! It was hard to find an aperture that blurred the fence out while keeping the flower in focus. With most of the later shots I decided just to worry about the flower and fix the background in Photoshop, but in the end this one stood out the most!

When I opened the photos in Lightroom, it was pretty clear that the sun (which was coming reasonably straight on) had washed out the colours slightly. Using the auto tone in Lightroom improved it, but they still didn't 'pop' like I wanted, so I decided to be brave and try playing around with the curves in Photoshop (which I have little experience with). After trying a few of the presets and moving some things around I pressed the 'auto' button - and this was what came out! Complete opposite to what I wanted, but I loved how the middle of the flower had stayed bright yellow, and the background went the interesting mix of blues. I had intended to go out and shoot some more once my camera battery had recharged, but immediately changed my mind on seeing this. I also applied an Unsharp mask (following the suggestions in Scott Kelly's The Digital Photography Book Vol. 1) to try and improve the sharpness slightly.

So there you have it for week one! The rest of the posts will not be as long, I assure you.