It may have been a traumatic week otherwise, but it was a good week for photography. I got some gorgeous shots this week, and I’m really happy with most of the pictures I took. Funny how everything creative, from writing to blogging to photography, runs hot and cold, isn’t it?
Although it seems like a million years ago now, this was the photo I took to commemorate our 10-year anniversary last Friday. These guys were the centrepiece on our wedding cake!
This is one of the two pictures that made it into Flickr’s “Explore” feature this week. I wait all year for my daisies to come out, and they grow in a large and unruly but happy-looking patch in my front yard. One of the first pictures I took with my D40 was of Simon in the daisies in 2007! I shot this one from down low, pointing up and into the light on one of the rare days of sun this week, so the petals have a neat translucent quality to them. (I didn’t do much post-processing on this, just a little bit of sharpening to bring out the edges and a tiny bit of a warmer cast. The blurry bits around the edges are the leaves from the tree above the daisies.)
This is the other picture that made it into Explore. When I saw the rhubarb stacked up in one of the Market stalls, I liked the almost-repeating shapes of the cut edges, and the almost-repeating patterns in the stalks, and the nice complimentary transition from red to green. I thought it was a throwaway snap, actually, until I was reviewing my shots that evening and something about it appealed to me. Even so, I am quite perplexed by how much people seem to like it — random strangers keep adding it as a favourite and it’s been bouncing in and out of Explore all week.
This one, on the other hand, is not only one of my favourites this week but one of my all-time faves. I called it “Precarious” – something about those about-to-tumble blocks gives it a nice dynamicism. (Is that a word?) I sat and watched Lucas stack the same blocks over and over and over again, snapping pictures of the different constructions, for the better part of an hour — and a hundred images!! This one was the best, IMHO.
I was making dinner the other day, and hadn’t snapped a single picture all day. It’s either a testament to my newly acquired comfort with the camera or a testament to my mad mothering skillz, but half a year ago I wouldn’t be able to conceptualize, compose and capture a photo like this while in the midst of making dinner!
(Conveniently, I’ve recently realized that the spot between the two burners on my stove makes for an excellent seamless white back drop. I’d been using the bathtub, but the light is better in the kitchen! I used it for the frog pictures above, too.)
In my favourite Flickr group, there are weekly challenges posted. This week, the challenge was to take a self-portrait. I made this one on my lunch hour, but I wasn’t overly fond of it. I’d planned to take another image of some sort in the evening, but that plan got derailed by the whole van-on-fire thing, so this is it for the day.
This is my favourite picture of the week. I took it when we first arrived on Victoria Island for our Aboriginal Experiences adventure. I noticed the reflection right away, but it was a bit of a trick to get the image composed fast enough to still take the picture and get to Lucas in time to prevent him from soaking himself. I did it! And I love the image. I desaturated it just a bit in Photoshop to give it that timeless feeling.
Funny, the rhubarb and the daisy pictures made it into Explore, but I far prefer the photos of the puddle and the blocks. But then, I’m a little biased about the subject matter. I really don’t even like rhubarb!
