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Happy Valentine’s Day: Frugal Still Life #6

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Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s cold, but sunny so no complaints here. This week Cheryl McCain challenged us to do some food photography for our Frugal Still Life assignment. Registration for this self-paced class opens tomorrow (check her side-bar). I can highly recommend it. It’s been lots of fun, and encouraged me to try some new things.

I made some dark chocolate salted almond clusters to take to some friends, and thought I’d try using them for the still life. Here they are ready to be delivered with the tag I created using some Papertrey Ink patterned paper (“Simple Valentine”), two Papertrey Ink tag dies, and my favorite double-ended banner die. The sentiment is from a new Reverse Confetti set:  Crushin’.

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 As always, I played around with some different perspectives.

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I scattered some unchopped almonds and some coarse sea salt, two of the only three ingredients in the candy.

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I loved Cheryl’s photo with the texture. I usually don’t think to even play around with these, but I think I like this shot the best. It’s a Kim Klassen texture called “Scrapit.”

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Here’s the recipe. Easy as pie.

1 bag dark chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli’s)
1 1/2 c. coarsely chopped unsalted roasted almonds
a pinch of coarse sea salt

Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler (you could use the microwave), stir in the almonds and a pinch of salt. Drop by small teaspoonsful onto parchment paper lined cookie sheets and sprinkle with a bit more salt. Refrigerate until firm. 

I’ll be back tomorrow with my Zoom In, Zoom Out shots. It’s been a crazy week, but I had some good photo opportunities.

 

Frugal Still Life: Week 5

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Cheryl McCain comes up with a new and interesting challenge every week for Frugal Still Life. I’m really enjoying this class. Still life is something that has always interested me, but I haven’t taken the necessary time to explore it. I’ve had a book on my Kindle Still Life Photography by Kevin Best for over a year now, but haven’t even started it. I’m quite sure I’ll get to it once this class ends. This week’s challenge was to explore complementary colors. As soon as I read the lesson, I knew I’d get out this beautiful blue bowl Sarah brought me from Mexico and fill it with tangerines. I picked up a dish towel at Target the other day which made a nice background. As usual, I played around with different perspectives, and I’m always interested in which ones appeal to you.

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Here’s what the set-up looked like this week. I was back in the kitchen for good light, and used a little black board I purchased as a backdrop for photographing cards to drap the kitchen towel.

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Frugal Still Life: Week 4

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Cheryl bumped up the challenge this week at Frugual Still Life with a post about metering modes, and asked us to capture some images changing the metering mode. I had to look up where to find the metering mode in the metadata in Lightroom, so right off the bat I learned something important. I forgot to take a shot of the set up this week. I used the cutting board and black board I use for taking shots of my cards in the studio window. It gets the same northern light as the windows in the kitchen, but there’s just one window instead of three, so there’s not as much light.

For the subject I chose three old volumes that sit stacked on the bookcase in our bedroom, and a watch that belonged to my maternal grandmother. She died before my parents were married, and I don’t have much that belonged to her. For many years, I was able to keep the watch in working order, and wore it on special occasions. In some of the photos, you can see the beautiful opal clasp that slides up and down the chain. The watch no longer works, but it’s one of my treasures.

My Canon Rebel 4Ti has four metering modes:

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-1 EV, Pattern metering mode, Tamron 18-270 lens

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-1 EV, Partial metering mode, Tamron 18-270 lens

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 -1 EV, Spot metering mode, Tamron 18-270 lens

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-1 EV, Center-weight metering mode, Tamron 18-270 lens

I also wanted to play around with perspective a bit.

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And finally, Cheryl gave us some textures to play around with. I haven’t played with textures in ages, and it’s not something I find very intuitive. Here’s one with her Volume 3 texture.

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I think I used the Overlay blending mode, but I forgot to write it down.

Then I tried a Kim Klassesn texture that was quite a bit lighter. Again, I’m not sure what blending mode I used, even though I had a notebook right next to me!

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I’m pretty fond of the one with Cheryl’s texture, but overall I’m happy with most of the images. I don’t see a huge difference in the different metering modes, but maybe I’m just not looking carefully enough. 

Frugal Still Life: Week 3

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This week Cheryl had a guest photographer at Frugal Still Life who shared her set-up as well as a beautiful still life composition. Cheryl challenged us to work on a similar composition with three items. At this time of year, I regularly buy flowers at the grocery store to brighten the long winter days. I had these lovely white astromeria on the dining room table, and decided on a still life around three white items. I found (and ironed!) a beautiful hand-embroidered tablecloth that belonged to my mother as the backdrop. If you look closely you can see a bit of the beautiful stitching. Here are a variety of shots. As always, I’m interested to know which shot you prefer.

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Here’s what the set-up looked like. I draped the tablecloth over a piece of folded white board on our kitchen table. This is the only room in the house that gets good light even though it’s a northern exposure. 

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Frugal Still Life: Week 2

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It’s getting toward the end of Week 2 at Cheryl McCain’s Frugal Still Life class. I’ve know all week what I wanted to use for my subject, but time is just slipping through my fingers here. Finally, today I got it all set up. 

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I’ve become a big fan of organic brown eggs. I looked around for the right size container to hold a dozen eggs, and decided on my berry bowl. It’s navy blue on the outside, so I pulled out my handloomed table runner as a background. One of the considerations for this week was to leave some “white” or negative space in your photo. That’s a technique I like quite a bit. 

I used my 18-270 Tamron lens for all the shots, and ended up with four I liked. Which one most appeals to you?

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Usually when I shoot a half shot, I have the subject on the left-hand side rather than the right-hand side. This wasn’t thought through completely, and I think I’d prefer it if it were reversed.

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This top down shot might be my favorite.

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I decided on a square crop for this one.

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And here’s one on the left-hand side, but with a different point of view. I have to admit I like taking the time to try a lot of different shots. These are the four I liked best, but I took quite a few more.

Frugal Still Life: Week 1

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This is the first week of class at Frugal Still Life with Cheryl McCain. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep up on the road, but it wasn’t at all difficult.

The weather in Florida is certainly a big improvement over the weather at home, but it’s been overcast and cool. Nonetheless, we’ve been able to get in a good walk on the beach both mornings we’ve been here. Today as we walked back, I stopped and picked up a piece of driftwood, some seaweed, and some shells to create a still life. I had a picture in my mind, and for once, it turned out pretty much as I imagined it.

Here’s the set up. I used a piece of particle board my mother-in-law had in the condo and set it on the screened porch. There was nice indirect light so I didn’t need to do anything special. (Good thing, since all my “tools” are at home.)

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This was shot with my Tamron 18-270 lens at 54mm. I wanted the focus to be sharp throught the whole image so I shot it at f/18 and needed to bump up the ISO to 800. The shutter speed was 1/40.