Day 296; Art and Absence

It's been a while. I feel slightly guilty that I've left the blog for so long, but I wasn't sitting idle all this time. Summer is an incredibly busy time for me, and I had to prioritize my time. In fact, my life won't be slowing down much this fall either, so posts will be sporadic.

Today's photo is of a rose I made from an old book for a project at my county fair this year. I was thrilled with how the arrangement turned out and plan to try making more again in the future. The text and the rounded shape of the petals add some interesting lines and shapes to the photo. When composing the shot, I wanted the eye to be drawn first toward the center of the flower and then radiate out to examine the petals. This was a really old book, so the pages were really yellow. I wanted the focus to be more on the lines and depth than on the color, so I used a faded black and white effect so there was still a touch of warmth.

Day 285; Poe & Poetry

I've always wanted to do a photo like this, and now that I have my own glasses I can. I set the glasses on a book opened to the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe (which is a really good poem, in case you were wondering).  I knew I wanted the final product to be black and white, and I ended up using a reverse focal soften effect, so the text in the glasses would be clear while the rest of the image was out of focus. If I had a do over I would probably experiment more with lighting and the composition - the focal point is a little too centered.

Day 132

This is a photo of the pages of a dictionary. This is an unabridged version, so it's really, really thick, and I was able to fill the entire frame with the pages. It's also pretty old, and the pages are starting to fray a little giving the photo more texture and breaking up some of the black lines. I really wanted to pull out the shadows, so I made the photo black and white then added very faded dark edges.