OK, 10 catchups coming up, please don't feel you have to comment on them all, or indeed any
Week 16 - Smoke
Week 16 - Smoke by
Donnie Canning, on Flickr
Ok, so while the immediate thoughts were either of someone smoking or of something on fire, neither were appealing. One because I don't smoke and the other because I wasn't going to start a fire or hope to see one. So, that pretty much left me with Smoke Art, some of which I've done before ( I really should put a page up about how to do this). All you need is a dark room and background and an incence stick for the smoke, then its just a case of using flash to capture the smoke. Ok there's a bit more to it than that but those are the essentials, once you have done that you either have a single smoke exposure or duplicate exposures or even mirrors.
So, this is the same image but mirrored 4 different ways to create this final image. Every smoke image is very open to interpretation so you will see something individual to you, or maybe only hints of something.
Week 17 - Vivid
Week 17 - Vivid by
Donnie Canning, on Flickr
I almost immediately thought of colouring pencils! Unfortunately, almost everyone thinks the same so that sets the challenge of how to try and take a shot that's been done a thousand times.
I decided to bunch the vivid colours and shoot them against a bright background, however I also wanted to be careful that no one point obscured one behind it, therefore I set the colouring pencils in such a way that they were stepped at different heights, to enhance this I also shot them so that they laid diagonally across the image. I shot from directly ahead but lit artificially with one flash from the left which was diffused with a sheet of paper and bounced some light back onto the dark side of the pencil shafts.
Week 18 - Large
Week 18 - Large by
Donnie Canning, on Flickr
First thoughts turned to either wildlife or buildings but, given I wasn't near any elephants or hippos, plus today's weather I decided I needed to find something indoors.
Et voila! I was going to get more use out of my lego stormtrooper as well as the colouring pencil from the previous theme! The idea for this just came to me by altering my perspective, I thought that if I don't have anything easily accessible that was actually large for me, what could be large compared to something on a smaller scale? This was shot on my dining room table on some printer paper for background and my flashgun from one side and a reflector on the opposite side so that the shadows weren't too harsh.
Week 19 - Architecture
Week 19 - Architecture by
Donnie Canning, on Flickr
The newest nearest architecture to where I live is a new development called Riverside North in Bedford. This area used to be a surface car park but is right on the side of the river Great Ouse that runs right through the town. I forget sometimes how nice Bedford can be, I find when you live somewhere you sort of lose sight of what it's like. To that end I find it useful to explore areas with the eyes of a tourist, certainly makes for an enjoyable time.
So this new development consists of a new Premier Inn, cinema, apartments and several restaurants (which are out of shot in this particular image. This part of the development however was my favourite section when it came to thinking of Architecture.
I saw the black and glass of the Premier Inn and initially tried to get a reflection of the brick and yellow apartments in the windows but there was just no angle that worked properly, so, standing back and looking at the buildings again to reassess, I decided to go wacky and get the fisheye out. This is the result!
So, by using the fisheye I could get a massive amount in the frame and accentuate the bend and perspective of the buildings almost like they were bending toward each other to protect the Vue cinema in the middle! Additionally, the contrast of the dark architecture on the left leads the eye into the sky and above the cinema toward the bright brickwork and yellow balconies on the right. I think it works and had to wait 20 minutes for the right light and for that cloud in the middle to appear and fill the blue expanse.
As a side note, this shot's a great example of breaking a photography rule about shooting in strong sun, this was shot in the middle of a strong sunny day, I seem to have got away with it too!
Week 20 - Broken
Week 20 - Broken by
Donnie Canning, on Flickr
I happened across a row of old colourful paraffin lamps in a Bedford pub when out looking for other shots and there was just one of them that had a broken glass. The real problem was how not to just take a snap, but take an image. It would have been all too easy to take a front shot of the row of them, all different colours but I needed the focus on the only broken one.
To do this I decided to go in close at a wide aperture to blur the intact lamp and focus on the glass of the other, then a slight crop on the computer and remove the distraction of the colours, again drawing the eye to the broken glass. I nearly did a straight black and white but thought a hint of sepia would suit the image better.
Week 21 - Transport
Week 21 - Transport by
Donnie Canning, on Flickr
It would be all toooooo easy to take yet another shot of my own scooter or to dig out a picture from the Old Warden show a few months ago for this one but instead I decided on this shot I took on a visit to Hitchin in Hertfordshire.
It's a relatively new Vespa PX Disc, a modern classic. It was quite a difficult shot to take due to the strong sunlight but the scooter in full shadow, so balancing the two was difficult but as we can see, not impossible. I opted for a portrait shot keeping the scooter in the left third and leaving room for the interesting buildings in the background. Using black and white added to the classic feel the Vespa deserved as well as removing distraction of the strong colours at this time of day.