5/52 - Love is hard work

Since it was just Valentine's Day this last week, I think that a picture of our wedding rings works out pretty well.

I was trying to think of a good title having to do with love or wedding rings or something sappy and I came across this quote, which I liked a lot.

"People usually talk about wedding rings being a perfect circle, with no beginning and no end. But, in reality, these rings do have a beginning. Diamonds are dug up from the earth, silver and gold are liquefied in a furnace at a thousand degrees. Hot metal is poured into a mold, cooled, then painstakingly polished. Something beautiful is made from raw elements.
Love is like that. It's hot dirty work. It comes from humble beginnings and is made by imperfect beings. It's a process of making something beautiful where there was once nothing at all."

I came up with the idea for this shot from a picture I found on-line where a wedding photographer took a very simple photo of the wedding rings on a glass. He had the bride's ring upside down, resting on the diamond and the groom's ring was square, so it stood on its own, next to the engagement ring, pretty easily. I didn't like the idea of the bride's ring being upside down and not being able to see the diamond, so I tried to change it up a bit. Since Paige has 2 wedding bands, they worked out really well to hold my ring up (since it's not square or flat), then I could put her engagement ring in the middle where you'd be able to see the diamond. And for the stand, it's just a wine glass flipped upside down. I like how it kind of looks like a glass pedestal. I held up a white plastic cutting board behind the rings and aimed a flashlight at them to give them a little sparkle.

In the end, I really like the way that it came out.



Let me know what you guys think.

T.

4/52 - D.O.F.

I'm a full week late on getting this picture posted, but, to my credit, I actually took it last week, but didn't get it uploaded until today. I've been traveling for work and just didn't get a chance to upload it before I left last week.

I wanted to try to get a picture this week with a very limited Depth of Field. I wanted to have a repeating pattern or structure in the picture to really show off just how shallow it was. I really wanted to be able to isolate one object within the whole picture.

I shot this with my 50mm f/1.8 (nifty fifty), which, with the very wide aperture, really helps you achieve the limited focal area.

I set this shot up at night, so all of the light that is illuminating the railings is from the moon coming in our big front window. I tried it a few times, using the house lights, but just couldn't get a very interesting look. I really like how the light is all coming from the side, giving a really nice contrast to the opposite side. With a quick conversion to black and white, I was all done.

I think that it turned out pretty well!



Let me know what you think.

T

3/52 - Floating Lillies

Well, I'm late again this week getting a picture posted. This picture is kind of weak sauce, but I figured I'd post it anyway. I tried shooting these flowers about 30 times and didn't get a picture that I really liked. I just couldn't get the light to work and my white background wasn't coming off as white and I was just having all kinds of problems. So, I stopped for a while, came back to it a while later and shot a few more frames.

I ended up getting this picture and liked it more than the other ones I shot. I'm still not crazy about it, but it'll do for now.

To get this shot, I used two pieces of white poster board for the background and a white piece of plexiglass for the base. I took two pieces of white wire hangers and cut them to make little stands for the flower, to get it up off of the ground and look like it was floating in the air. Later, I removed the stands in Photoshop.

I had the flower in front of a window, which I thought would give it pretty good light, but since the window isn't big enough, it was casting shadows on the white background and making it uneven. So, I put the whole set up in the middle of the kitchen counters and just shot with a long exposure to blow out the white background and make it look a little more uniform.

So, that's about it. Nothing too exciting.

Let me know what you think.

T