Saturday, July 20, 2013

When the tools you need are in your very own hands.

Task: Yellow Like The Summer Sun. Take a photo dominated by the solar color.
I read this morning's Daily Create and decided to go out in search of yellow things to photograph. On my way out the door I grabbed my iPhone (the best camera is the one you have with you, of course), my car keys and a bag of lolly bananas to snack on during the drive. It wasn't for at least another 2.5 minutes that I realised I was holding a prime subject in my very own hands.

Of course I couldn't just snap a photo of a lolly bag, that's too lazy even for me, so I ventured into the kitchen in search of something to photograph them in. A wine glass, perfect! But all the photos looked ridiculous with the toaster, table, cats etc in the background. I racked my brains for some sort of backdrop and remembered a roll of block printing paper I'd bought a couple of weeks ago. I've been meaning to mess around with makeshift studios to photograph students' artwork and now seemed like the perfect opportunity. I tried in a few different locations and came to the conclusion that I definitely need to refine my studio skills, probably using reflectors. But I did end up with a photo I liked:

Untitled

I opened it in Aperture - yep, overkill for iPhone photos! - and played with the tools. Since the colour of lolly bananas is variable and these were fairly pale, I ramped up the saturation and decreased the vibrancy, which left yellow as the only colour in the photo.

I'm pretty happy with the result of 10 minutes' work and I think it will be a useful skill to refine and teach kids in the classroom.

2 comments:

  1. That's a lovely composition, very elegant. And its a good example where centering the subject works well (the soft shadows on the left provide some subtle asymmetry)

    ReplyDelete