Abi Reading – Home

29. February 2012 · Comments Off on Abi Reading – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

So yesterday I started shooting environmental portraits of the family.  I started with James on his Xbox, and tonight we have Abi reading.  Now Abi is a very keen gymnast and is usually flipping or cartwheeling around the house/garden/sofa etc., and my immediate thought was to capture her doing her gymnastics thing.

But I walked into the family room and found her literally in this pose reading on the sofa.  I loved the pose so much I grabbed the camera and took the shot.

Of course the moment I pointed the camera in her direction she started to pose for me and I had to ask her to just pretend I wasn’t there.  After a couple of shots she stopped smiling and I got the image below.

So that’s two for two, tomorrow night is the Lisa picture – if I can just convince her to let me that is.

This evening the Halo guys decided they wanted to play connect four.  So out came the game and the competition started.

Bamboo – Home

21. February 2012 · Comments Off on Bamboo – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

Today I worked from home and had no idea what to shoot.  I had to pop out in the afternoon to go to Bartell’s to pick up something and while I was in the store I saw some bamboo potted plants.  Now those who know me will tell you I am useless with plants, I can’t grow anything.  There are those with green fingers, well I have death fingers.  If it’s a plant and I touch it, it has days to live.

But I have a friend at work (Eric) who has one of these bamboo plants on his desk and it’s thriving and has been growing for the last two years (it’s now nearly 2 foot tall) and Eric tells me he doesn’t have to do anything with it, just keep the roots under water.  So when I saw these plants I thought maybe I could keep one alive for a couple of weeks.  Being the kind of guy who is always up for a challenge I got one.

Anyway at 5pm I had to go and get Abi from school (who was rehearsing for her school play) and I’m still wondering what to shoot.  When I get home I walk in the door and see the bamboo plant and thought maybe I could make something interesting out of that.

Now I once heard the great Joe McNally say “If you want to make something look interesting, don’t light it all”, so I tried to keep the lighting low and subtle.  Having said that I actually went from one light to three and took loads of different shots, but ironically the one I liked the best was one of the first single light shots.

So here is my picture for today, a bamboo potted plant that will be dead in two weeks.

Tonight was Halo card night and as I walked passed I heard Carter say “All In” and if I had his hand I would have done the same.

Smoke Sculpture – Home

16. February 2012 · Comments Off on Smoke Sculpture – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Tonight I thought I’d do something completely different.  I’ve taken loads of landscape shots lately and felt like a change.  Just over a year ago I saw someone produce some great smoke sculptures and I thought I’d give it a go.  Basically you set up a black background, fire a flash up into the air and in front of the flash light some incense.

You then start taking pictures of the backlit incense smoke.  When you have a few images you pull them all into photoshop and create a picture from lots of “interesting” shapes.  You can really go wild and make anything you want.  For my first attempt I thought I’d try a sea horse (the shapes I was pulling in helped).

When you’re done, you can add a color cast using photoshop blend modes. It’s actually a lot of fun and I’ll definitely do it again and I guess the beauty of this is every time you do it you get a completely unique image.

I appreciate that this is completely fake and a composited image, but you need a camera to do this so I class this as photography.

Anyway here is my first attempt.

I think the Halo guys are getting board, we left them in the kitchen and came back to find them “playing” with utensils!

Yellow Gerbera Daisy – Home

09. February 2012 · Comments Off on Yellow Gerbera Daisy – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

I needed a color infusion today, I’ve been uploading too many drab, gray images!  Luckily the other day Lisa came home with some Yellow Gerbera Daisy’s (yes I know that’s probably a made up name but that is what it said on the sticker on the flowers).

Anyway, Lisa really liked the color of the flowers and there was one that she described as the “perfect flower”.  So when she got home she said “This is one of your images of the day”.  Being a good husband (and a little scared of Lisa) I immediately grabbed my camera and took the photograph below.

Today we find our Halo heroes talking to their dogs, who apparently haven’t been very good today!

Sugar – Home

03. February 2012 · Comments Off on Sugar – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

For those of you who know me, or more importantly my wife Lisa, know she likes chocolate.  Actually that’s a bit of an understatement, Lisa LOVES chocolate.  There is a problem though, we live in Seattle in the US and Lisa loves UK Cadbury chocolate.  Now you can buy Cadbury’s in the US but Hershey sells it under license and they changed the recipe.

Lisa thinks that Hershey actually changed it because the UK version tastes better than Hershey’s US chocolate.

So she has a problem, she wants her Cadbury “Fix” (and trust me it’s like that) but she can’t get it in the US.

To help Lisa out and keep her supplied, friends and family regularly send her Cadbury’s through the post.  If someone comes to the US to visit, Lisa will only let them in the house if they stock her supply.

Over Christmas my niece Aimee came out to the US to spend a few weeks with us and as expected she brought chocolate, she actually brought the largest bar of chocolate I had ever seen.

So tonight I thought I would take a picture of the Halo guys getting into Lisa’s large bar (which she is well into herself by the way).

After taking this picture I thought I would try a “candy” image for my serious shot.

So today’s image called “Sugar” was created. – Tomorrow no more food shots – I promise.

As promised, here are the Halo guys chomping down on a huge bar of chocolate.

Worlds biggest bar
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