It was difficult to choose only three photos to go along with my stuck location photo as I had many I really liked. I was out very early in the morning at the house my Dad and Stepmom owned (8-hour drive away from my home). I was there to make progress on clearing out a lifetime of household goods and treasures. My Dad passed July of 2016 and my Stepmom just passed May 18th so it has been a difficult time, understandably. She was an avid gardener, so I knew I would love having my stuck in place photos from a vantage point in their yard. It has been difficult to keep up with class during this time, but this challenge gave me an opportunity for a respite and great excuse to focus on the beauty around me. I see a “Good Morning” scene with the early morning sunshine hitting the house window. I like the silhouette of the leaves on the house as well as the geometry formed with the branch shadow across the window paired the angle of the lower edge of the window. I cropped the left side of this photo very slightly. On the little green plant I see the phlox petal which tells that there are other flower nearby even though they are out of sight. I also see the leaf of a weed in the lower right corner and know there was work to be done in this garden, I think the shadow it casts is interesting. The panning photo is of many dill and phlox plants mixed together. The effect makes me think of a close-up of a Monet painting and I wonder what is out of the frame that I might also like to see.
This is the bumblebee view of a small volunteer sunflower growing in an old half barrel planter tucked in a corner of my fenced (deer deterrent!) vegetable garden. It was challenging to get the camera in position with all the obstacles in the tight quarters. It was late morning on a hot sunny day and the wind would tease by stopping for a moment only to pick right up again so I was out with this sunflower for quite a while waiting for a still moment to come along. I do not have a macro lens, but I do have a set of extension tubes. This was taken using my stock Canon 18-55mm lens with all three of the extension tubes in place. I liked this photograph for the repeated shapes and the dew drops. The position of the camera is closer to the left side of the flower so as you look to the right it becomes more out of focus. Should I have cropped the out of focus left edge? I chose not to because I liked the shapes that are pointing to the right in unison and didn’t want to mess with the balance of that grouping. I don’t know if you can see it, but in the large drop at the bottom of the photograph there is what looks like a little face reflected on the left side. I like to think I had a garden fairy helping me out that day. ISO 400, f/32, 1/13th sec. Camera was on a tripod, but tripod was also being handheld in position (I really needed that garden fairy!). I played with highlights and shadows, I bumped the exposure down a little and upped the saturation just a tad, I also used PS to fill in one small area that was overblown with white.
This is a photo of my Dad’s old snowshoes. For supporting props, I placed them on one of his old green wool army blankets and set my husband’s furry trapper hat and some fur gloves to one side. In the background I have an old tin I really like with an old leather satchel to the right. As we are close to setting heat records it seemed a tad humorous to be using these items for my photo shoot. For editing, I set the aspect ratio to 16 by 9 as that emphasized the elongated snowshoe shape. I also adjusted the highlights, shadows and whites. I used the burn tool in the upper right corner to tone down the light reflection on the leather case flap. I tried darkening the bottom of the photo where the wool blanket is out of focus, but I didn’t like the looks so that was discarded. I had my camera setting on top of a set of books as my tripod. I used my Canon 50mm lens at ISO 100, f2.8 at 1/13 sec. Soon after shooting this image my large orange tabby came into the scene and cozied in next to the furry items and looked at me as if it were his turn to have his photo taken!
