This one's my 52Frames submission for the "Sports Photography" challenge.
Sport is very much not my thing, and I have no idea where I'd go to shoot any without looking like a more massive weirdo than usual.
The sole concession to sport that I have in the house is this baseball that I was sent when I joined Smarter Every Day's Patreon, so that's my subject for today.
This is my submission for this week's 52Frames' "Show us your toys" challenge.
I recently improved my equipment storage setup with a new cabinet, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to show it off.
It's nice to be able to grab the right lens without wrestling it out of the tiny cabinet I was using before, and my flash and grip gear now has a proper home rather than in boxes on the floor.
It's also been a while since I took a self-portrait, so you get to have my ugly mush foisted upon you today too.
Many lighting sins were atoned for with Lightroom...
I've been feeling very un-creative this last week or so, so I was struggling to pull anything together for this week's 52Frames "Centred composition" challenge.
I had been assembling some new flatpack furniture, and a screwdriver caught my eye as possibly making for a good centred composition, and the balance in the shot might be a nice nod to the perfect balance that a good quality tool often has in your hand.
I added a little catchlight to one side with the aim of accentuating the shape, and to prevent the shot looking too 2D.
This one's a possible option for 52Frames "Shadows".
Not totally convinced by it though, maybe I'll come up with something better tomorrow.
I very much needed this walk today.
This is my 52Frames submission for this week's "Time" challenge.
I am quite happy with this shot - it's time on a longer scale, but time nonetheless.
This one's my submission for this week's 52Frames challenge, "Soundtrack". The song I'm on about is The Fade Out Line by Phoebe Kildeer and The Short Straws.
The lines in the sand reminded me of magnified vinyl record grooves fading out into nothing.
This one was my 52Frames "one light source" submission last week.
I thought I was going to lose my streak with being away from my lighting gear, but I managed to pull this one together using my little LED torch.
Probably far from perfect, and a macro lens would have delivered much sharper results, but I'm declaring this one a success, at the very least in terms of wrestling victory from the jaws of defeat.
This is my submission for this week's 52Frames "Out Of Place" challenge.
I quite enjoyed the thinking part of this challenge, coming up with various slightly surreal situations.
I had planned to borrow an old rotary dial telephone and take it somewhere odd, but the weather has turned to rain, so I ultimately dropped that plan in favour of this strange out-of-place place setting that I could shoot indoors.
This is the first time in years that I have actually used a flash attached to the top of the camera rather than off-camera on a light stand of some sort. Naturally, It was not actually pointed at the subject, but bounced off the white ceiling.
This was my 52 Frames submission for the "Shoot From Above" challenge.
A literal 11th-hour effort this week, I had a very busy week with work, and the weather wasn't suitable for drone operations while it was still light on Sunday. As a result, I found myself standing on the edge of the locked-up car park of a retail park brandishing the drone controller at 11PM.
I was initially just going for the patterns in the parking spaces, but the spilt paint splotches caught my eye as telling an interesting little story about the DIY shop that is closest to these spaces!
<verbiage>
You may have noticed a certain radio silence from my general direction.
My head exploded due to work. Without going into too much gory detail, I ended up being faced with a requirement to conduct a time based equivalent of fitting a quart into a pint pot, which ended very approximately as well as one might imagine.
All this "fun" correlates with me enjoying a bout of shingles, which adds yet more fun to the already copious quantities of fun that was already sloshing around my ankles.
Correlation doesn't imply causation of course, but it's quite the coincidence if it's not causally linked...
</verbiage>
This one's probably going to be my submission for this week's 52 Frames "Abandoned" challenge.
This one's my submission for this week's 52Fframes "Macro" challenge.
It's a 2x macro shot, and is a focus stack of 60 frames.
My work boots have just about had it...
This one's probably going to be my submission for this week's 52 Frames "unusual crop" challenge.
I'll take the EC on this one too, as I used my 35mm prime lens.
This one's my submission for this week's 52Frames challenge, "Something New".
I recently bought this GPS unit to help with geotagging my photos, because I'd got very used to my old camera having an internal GPS receiver, and my current camera only supports geotagging via a phone connection, which is a faff. I often forget to connect and babysit the slightly unreliable connection.
This challenge was a good opportunity for me to revisit product photography, which I've not done for ages.
I thought it was fun to sneak the week number in as the compass bearing, even if it was awkward to line up!
I contemplated shooting this out in the field, but I eventually went for shooting it indoors under a big softbox because of the weather.
I should have cleaned the screen more thoroughly before shooting, as I had to erase rather a lot of fluff and dust in post!
This one's a backup, shot last night.
This was my submission for last week's 52Frames "In the style of" challenge.
I took Andreea Badiu as my inspiration this time, as I enjoy her work, and it's quite a different style to what I usually shoot myself.
She often uses a muted, warm palette, and a lamp quite often features in her work.
Late and a backup again.
This one was my submission for last week's 52Frames "Frame Within A Frame" challenge.
Not as good as I wanted, but it was all I was able to come up with in the time I had.
This one's my frankly rather indifferent submission for this week's 52Frames "Fluid" challenge. I am claiming the EC this time though, as I used an ND filter, which let me push the exposure time out to half a minute to blur the water.
I feel like I've run out of creative energy recently, probably due to the relentless stream of nonsense going on at work.
I'm hoping that this will go away soon, one way or another!
This one’s my submission for 52Frames' "Daily Ritual" challenge.
It took me a while to come up with something that fit "ritual". I'm not a particularly ritualistic person, but I do like my coffee and breakfast brioche swirl in the morning, so that felt like a good subject.
I'm usually in a rush, so the motion blur style and chaotic angle also felt like a good fit.
I took this on a walk after visiting my sister-in-law, who is in hospital dealing with yet another complication of a chronic condition. Her husband and / or parents are almost constantly at her side to support and advocate for her.
My initial title was simply "Walk With Me", but the resolutely marching figure despite the cracking paint, coupled with the original title put me in mind of the support that many of us are lucky enough to receive from good friends and good family when our lives take a bad turn.
This one's my submission for this week's 52Frames "Street Details" challenge. There were another couple of options, which I might use as a backup at some point, but I felt like this one had more story, and therefore more meaning to it.
This one's my 52Frames submission for this week's "use the wrong lens" challenge.
It's not typical to use an ultra-wide lens for a portrait, hence the "wrong lens" label.
I think the distorted effect is quite fun.
Holly isn't interested in sitting still for very long, and the camera is really quite boring for her - she would much rather come up to you and lick your face or prod you with an enquiring paw!
The autofocus was working overtime on this one, and it's done a pretty respectable job.
With that, it's sadly auf wiedersehen to my little schnauzery friends. I have lots of good memories of them. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch up with them again in the future.
A couple more after the jump.
This one's my 52Frames submission for this week's "Through The Looking Glass" challenge.
Not strictly a looking-glass, but I guess a pool of water was probably the first thing in history that people might have used as a mirror, so I'm going with it.
