Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
This picture depicts mostly man-made objects: the sun/head; the stone sculpture, both set against the wood background and base. The fern peeking in from the rights is, however, natural. I loved the contrast between the two. I also liked the colorful textures of the wood.
Usually when I take pictures of “growing things” they’re of the flowers in our garden. I’ve now decided to do a series of pictures of plants growing at the side of the road along the lake. This is the first of the series. I was impressed by the late day sunlight backlighting this green leaf.
It was standing on one of our shelves and caught my eye. A gift from our older daughter who lived in Africa for some time. I tried using the Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f2 Biotar, but didn’t get the results I was looking for. Where I was taking the picture was rather dark and I couldn’t quite get the manual focus right. So I switched to a Sigma 30mm f2.8 and much preferred the results.
A neighbor gave us some irises from his garden as a welcome back gift for my wife. They came in a glass vase (which we’ll return to him) full of colored glass beads. Seeing them on the table I thought the shapes, patterns, colors and the smooth textures were appealing and decided to make this picture. To enhance the overall effect I took a flashlight and placed it behind the vase shining through the vase towards the camera.
Taken with a Sony Alpha 500 and Tamron 18-250mm lens, f16 at 0.4sec and the camera on a tripod.
One of the books I got for my birthday was “Sudek” by Sonja Bullaty. I’ve become something of a fan of Josef Sudek of late – ever since I saw some pictures he’d taken of St. Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague. Some of his pictures remind me a little of another one of my idols: Eugene Atget. There’s a certain ‘stillness’ about both of them and Sudek, in particular had a wonderful feeling for light.
I was over at a friend’s having a drink when I noticed the light coming through the window and falling on this glass vase with lilacs in it. It reminded me a little (a very little) of some of Sudek’s still lifes – simple pictures taken in his house and and in his studio. Because of the delicate color of the lilacs I was tempted to leave the picture in color, but as a kind of hommage to Sudek I decided to go for a black and white treatment instead.