Day 247; Black and Lace

I really love lace, though I don't wear it often. There are white lace curtains over the windows in my room which I see everyday but don't really look at. If you really look at lace there are some very interesting patterns and textures. For this photo, I laid the curtain over a blanket and took a close up of the threads which make up the lace. I love black and white, and especially with the high contrast in this shot.

Day 228; Honeycomb Pattern

My brothers are really into Star Wars, and have a bunch of Star Wars toys. This hexagon honeycomb-like pattern was on the floor of one of their ships. I liked the ridges on each of the hexagons, and the missing ones which provided interest and shadows.

Day 227; Woven Straw Hat

 After getting back from Kansas it took me a while to get back in the normal swing of things. Today I broke out an old straw hat I used to wear. I loved the woven straw texture and the pattern of rings radiating out from the top of the hat. The hat is a pale pink color, but I really wanted to draw attention to the texture and lines in the photo by converting it to black and white.

Day 222; Wavy Bark Texture

To switch gears a little bit I decided to post an abstract bark texture today. I loved the peeling, wavy look and the bright colors. I tried to enhance the lines by angling the camera and increasing the contrast slightly.

Day 218; Colorful Beads

Since I had a black and white photo yesterday I wanted to take a really colorful one today. I dug into my old beads and pulled out some different sizes, colors, and patterns. When editing I mostly wanted to emphasize the coloration, so I adjusted the saturation and contrast as well as applying dark edges.

Day 217; G On Canvas

The background for this photo is a painting of a rose my sister did on canvas. For the main subject I used a charm in the shape of a letter G which I bought years ago to wear hanging from my back brace. I haven't worn it in quite some time, but I saw it sitting on the shelf today and thought it would be a fun subject to shoot. I didn't like the yellows in the photo due to the lighting, so I used a black and white Holga effect from picmonkey.com which also enhanced some of the details in the canvas.

207; Lace Curtain

It's been a while since I last posted and there are several combined reasons which prevented me. I wanted to come back today with a stunning or at least memorable photo, but that didn't exactly happen. Today's abstract is of the lace curtain which hangs over the west window in my room, and was taken at sunset when this window lets in all sorts of  beautiful light. I loved how the pattern in the lace really showed in this photo and how the draping of the fabric added some depth to the photo. I chose to highlight those details with a black and white effect.

Day 205; Black and White Round Beads

Back in the day I made jewelry as 4-H projects. I got better at it, and started selling my creations at local swap meets. A couple years ago I lost interest in the hobby and put all my supplies away. Today I got out this tub of black and white round beads for the subject of today's photo. I liked the way each bead reflected the round light source I'd used.

Day 204; Kickball

Today's abstract is a close up of a kickball my brothers left laying around. The textured surface is probably supposed to help prevent the ball from slipping out of your hands, but today I was more interested in the pattern and lines it would provide in a photograph. The ball is a worn green color which I didn't really like, so I knew I wanted to use a black and white effect. I like Holga because it accentuated the lighting pattern I had achieved using natural light through a window.

Day 199

I was experimenting again with my de-shadow box, this time with a scarf and bracelet. I love the pattern and colors in this scarf. The bright, hard bracelet gives a nice contrast while adding a detailed subject. The only editing I did was to reduce the yellow hues in the bracelet and add a very subtle dark edge to make the light bracelet really pop.

Day 183

This is one of the sides to my headphones which were sitting beside me when I started looking for something to photograph today. The different textures of the black rim and the pink netting inside were pretty interesting I thought, and I really liked how the light played out on the round shape. The brown table I took the photo on looked really out of place in the photo, so I painted black and white over it. I liked the pink color in the center, so I left it as it was. A slight dark edge was the finishing touch.

Day 182

Today's photo is a macro of a hand towel my mom got for Christmas that was sitting in her office today. The towel was a really bright green which I liked a lot at first, but it was just too overwhelming for the photo. With the black and white you can really appreciate the details of all the interwoven threads that make up the towel.

Day 181

 My sister got a beautiful necklace with a camera charm on it for me for Christmas, and the gift box that it came in has been sitting on my desk for the past couple weeks. It was only today that I recognized the intricate patterns on the box. When I was holding the box for the shot I somehow managed to produce this dramatic shadowing and highlighting when I used the on camera flash.

Day 169

I spent the first half of today at the hospital, and the second trying to get caught up on school work. I finally finished a Spanish paper I'd been working on, and then remembered that I still needed to post. On my desk I had my camera case, textbooks, a spool of pink ribbon from a 4-H project, and some other miscellaneous stuff. I used the front of my camera case for a textured background, and then with my left hand held the pink ric rac in front with my left hand while shooting with my right. Needless to say, it was hard to get one in focus. I'm not entirely sure the ribbon is in focus yet, but I thought the shiny aspect was a nice compliment to the ordered pattern of the camera case.  To edit, I applied black and white just to the spot of wall you can see i=behind the case, and then a small dark edge to finish.

Day 160

This photo was taken this summer when my mom took us to visit one of her friends. I liked the random way the logs were stacked and the varying sizes and shapes. The black and white filter I thought gave a more artistic and finished look than the original browns and golds of the wood.

Day 142

This photo is of an old Allis-Chalmers tractor my grandfather owns. I loved how the paint had cracked and aged, and thought it would make a really cool photo. I also like the angle I used, as it draws the reader's eye back into the photo. To edit, I applied a very slight Orton effect to add some contrast between the paint and the orange background of the tractor as the colors were pretty faded with age. I also did a really faint light edge to enhance the white paint.

Day 137

Today's set up is very similar to yesterday's, the only real change is the subject. This is a piece of modelling clay that I formed into a round disk and then pushed against a fireproof safe that had this cool squiggly line pattern. I really liked the contrast of the random, round lines in the clay and the straight lines in the book's cover I used as the background. Editing also was much the same, a slight Orton effect and then black and white.

Day 134

This is a close up/macro of one of my dad's neck ties. I noticed the interesting pattern and that it would be a good photo subject. I love how the pattern of cubes gives an illusion of depth. To edit I applied a very slight orton effect to pull out some of the blacks and make the blues and yellows pop. I also adding dark edges to help enhance the detail in the stiches.

Day 131

This morning I took some macros of a leaf, trying to get some interesting lines and angles. The only thing I really don't like about this photo is the brown spot, as it really detracts from the appearance of the whole photo. To edit, I added very slight white edges to help pull out the highlights and not enhance the spot.

Day 128

This photo is a macro of a piece of tulle I had tied into a bow to give the overlapping and various distances from the camera. I placed the bow in front of a black notebook to get a solid backdrop. I then applied the black and white effect because in the original image the tulle is a very bright blue, and the light going through the tulle onto the backdrop made the whole photo blue.