Not original I know, but I've seen enough people singing the praises of attempting to take and post a photo daily, to give it a go myself. I'm covering several groups, facebook, flickr, a blog on tumblr which I'll eventually link back to my photography site if it actually works, and here. Hopefully it'll get some interesting critiques and discussions going to help me improve my game, as well as others.
Daily Photo Project - Day 1: Cotton buds by
Chris_Moody, on Flickr
The first photo in a project with the aims of taking and posting a photo, daily, for as long as I can, hopefully learning tips and techniques along the way.
Comments and critique are welcomed.
Subject:Cotton Buds lit from behind.
Equipment:Cotton buds (Q-tips)
Canon EOS 7D
Canon 100mm EF f2.8 Macro Lens
Manfrotto 190XPROB Tripod with 494RC2 Head
Fa&Mi Evo 50 LED Diving Torch
Generic 3rd party Radio control shutter release
Description:A few days ago I decided to try a daily photo project, but it wasn't until today that I managed to kick it off.
I think a weakness of mine is an almost lazy attitude to actually get off my backside and take photos, so hopefully this'll help.
So today, whilst in the bathroom, I saw a box of cotton buds on the window, and wondered what they'd look like with some random lighting thrown into the mix, I didn't know whether they might have some kind of fibre-optic properties.
The first challenge was setting up the shot. I don't have a studio, or any cloth to use as a backing. The cotton buds were in a transparent box, but I wanted them out of the box.
I ended up taking the buds out of the box, and using a battery and a small box, wedged the buds in the gap created by the battery and box one by one, stacking them till I had enough to fill the frame.
This was done on my upstairs ballustrade, as the only alternative was carrying everything downstairs to the dining room (see, I'm lazy).
Next I set the camera up on the tripod. I used live view zoomed in 10x and manual focus to ensure I had what I wanted in focus.
I opted to angle the frame slightly, so the tips weren't quite parallel to the lens.
I used f8 in Av Priority mode for the shot. I took several with the lightsource (a handheld high-power dive torch) at various angles.
Post processing:Another problem I have is a tendency to post process a bit too much. I'm trying to cut this out, but it's tough. The original unaltered image was ok on its own, but I decided to tweak the brightness, contrast, and blacks in Adobe Camera Raw 5.1. I also altered the White balance from the 5200 setting the camera chose (AWB) to 5000, which got rid of a slightly warm hue.
So that's it for today. This is my first post, hopefully in time I'll learn to write much more informative and interesting posts, so please, any feedback, comments, suggestions etc are more than welcome!