Day 226 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "C"

"C" for Crumpled


I don't have an armchair, so I couldn't get the "C" out of its curve.

Susmita, if you're reading this, please accept my thanks for the great ideas for the series!  I will definitely try the other subjects that you've suggested.

I wanted to make up for the lazy shots I took yesterday - admittedly, I was exhausted and I'd had a really long day.  If I hadn't missed posting the day before, I would have refrained from posting yesterday.  But anyway, I will take comfort in the fact that I have made the effort of coming up with something today.

And the renewed energy sprung from the fact today was my last working day before the holidays!  Yay!  I will have two weeks off, although those two weeks are chock-a-block with activities!  The first week will be filled with chores, and the second week will be spent with a very dear friend in San Francisco.

@Swati:  I can't thank you enough for inviting us to spend time with you guys!  I can't wait to see you! :)

The images were shot with my 90 mm macro lens, most of them with the lights turned off and subject illuminated with my Lights App on the iPod.  The one with the white background was shot under fluorescent light.  They're all kinda similar shots, but I like the slight colour variations in each.  I would love to know which one you think turned out better than the rest.

f/7.1, EV - 2/3 stops, 30s, ISO 200, AWB, Aperture Priority

f/5.6, EV - 2/3 stops, 30s, ISO 200, AWB, Aperture Priority

f/6.3, EV - 1/3 stops, 0.3s, ISO 200, CWB, Aperture Priority

I changed the base of the subject to make it sit on a white cardboard, instead of having it sit on glass. 

f/6.3, EV - 1/3 stops, 30s, ISO 200, AWB, Aperture Priority

The background didn't turn out the way I had wanted it to - I will definitely need a white seamless background for this one.  However, I loved the spotlight effect in this image.  I changed the base of the subject to make it sit on a white cardboard, instead of having it sit on glass. 

Day 206 - Week of Lights - Rushing

I was rushing to post before midnight, so I did a few quick shots.  But I was still too late.  Ah, well!

Taken in a dark kitchen, light source is my iPod Lights App held in front of subject, at camera top.  I tried a couple of shots using aperture priority, but I was getting a far slower shutter speed than I wanted, causing overexposure.

So, I switched to Manual mode and set the shutter speed and aperture and got this shot.  This shot has minimal processing - I stepped up the vibrancy a bit, and that's all I did.  I wanted the lines to be brighter, but overexposing it a bit didn't yield the desired results.  I guess I will need to find another way to do this.  This goes on my list to try again in the future.

90 mm, f/4.5, 3.2s, ISO 400, AWB, Manual Mode

Day 205 - Week of Lights - Lemonade

My weekend started today as I've got the day off tomorrow.  But I would have loved this long weekend more if I knew I could just chill and do as I pleased.  Well, life isn't so simple, nor was it meant to be.  So, I have to run errands and get a lot of important stuff done tomorrow, including an oil change and getting winter tires put on.  At least I know that driving will be better when the snow hits.

To commemorate the early start to the weekend, I decided to drink lemonade out of my stemware!  What an idea!  No, I'm kidding!  I just needed another subject for the light experiment for this evening, and I thought that trying to catch the rainbow reflections would be nice.  But the light from the iPod wasn't bright enough to do that.  But I got close to what I wanted, so I gave up after about 10 shots.  Again, I shot these images with the lights off.

In the first image, the colour you see in the background is created by the streetlights reflecting on the wall; and the junk I had on my table, behind the subject, helped create the soft patterns.

Both shots were taken with the 90 mm lens with the glass placed on top of my iPod screen with the light coming from the Lights app.

f/6.3, 30s, ISO 400, Aperture Priority, AWB

f/6.3, 1/6s, ISO 400, Aperture Priority, AWB

I think I like both the shots!  The bottom one looks quite pretty actually.

Day 204 - Week of Lights - Slacking Off!

I was that close to not doing my shot of the day!  But then I roused myself out of my tired and benumbed state and took precisely four shots.  I definitely like the red version over the blue or yellow ones.

Any guess what this might be? ;-) 

Day 188 - White (dis)Balance

When I don't get a chance to do photography during the day, I obviously have to think of indoor subjects in artificial light as I'm not in a position to buy a flash right now.  I have come to a decision that I will just continue to use the lamps I have and find suitable subjects to photograph in that - something that's in keeping with the theme of artificial light.

I used a C-PL for these shots as I was getting a lot of reflections from the serving platter.

This evening's other challenge was the WB and despite using a custom WB, I didn't quite get what I was after.   You will notice the difference in the colour cast in each of the images.  I will have to spend some time figuring out what happened.  For now, I didn't change the WB in post as I wanted to keep a record of what went on with it this evening.