Week Three

Cheryl has a guest leading our course this week. Barb Brookbanks has an amazing north facing window for her shots, her behind the scenes shot is lovely.
She has suggested we set up a still life with three items.

Here are some ideas I had.

I was drawn to these colours and liked the tall vase with the book and beads low in the picture.

My little scallop shells again, I really like them on the white plate

A Tibetan singing bowl with its box, mat and striker which I changed to black & white

And Poppyseed heads, focusing on the middle one, and then a Pixel Dust texture on them.

I am loving this class, I hope you can tell.
I like seeing all the pull back shots that show your set ups. I thought you would like to see mine.
I have a light tent but it is far too big to leave up all day so I had an idea to make something smaller. I bought two artists canvases about 18inches high and fixed them together with three small hinges. I can sit at the table and make my pictures while outside it rains all day every day at the moment. The table in the kitchen has been like this for a week! I love it.

This week we are looking at Cropping and Space

I love to fill the frame with my subject, probably because I love macro photography but I don’t always want to set my tripod up!
On the other hand white space is very lovely and calming so this week I did a bit of both on each set piece.

I didn’t crop any of my pictures, I set the frame up in the camera.

These are my favourites.
I like the lower half of the picture filling the frame

And this one I like because the blue is filling the space while the white hyacinth is adding to the white space top right

And I like the bright pop of colour and a lot of white space in this one.

I am enjoying playing around with still life, especially when it’s raining, which it is most days around here!

Thank you Cheryl

An eight week Course with Cheryl McCain Photography.

Week One

I spent ages this afternoon setting up my light box and lights, it was dark outside by the time I finished!
I found this assignment really difficult to do. I don’t feel confident with setting up a still life to photograph and I didn’t like any of the backgrounds I chose. In the end instead of feeling inspired and frugal I felt tired and frustrated!
Any how as I want to learn here are my first attempts at still life.

This is nearly my original (and only) idea.

The Chinese fabric reminded me I had this Japanese patterned teapot and cups, they were my mothers.
I didn’t like any of the backgrounds I had so I made this one with a texture from Bonnie at Pixel Dust Photo Art.

As it was almost six o’clock I thought of this. The background is the black plastic fabric that came with the light box but I didn’t like it so I smudged it in Photoshop.

I had cleared out the drawer with the tea towels in as suggested by Barbara in this post.
I came across this little pile of clam shells.

I have a lot to learn!
So to help with my education, if you don’t mind, which one do you like best?

I’m off to link up and be inspired by others taking this class.