All that glitters

Sparkly things catch my eye. I don’t care whether it’s diamonds, shimmering water or broken glass. If it shines and glimmers, I am easily distracted and instantly intrigued. I’m not sure if this is due to gender or genetics, but it is certainly a trait that has been passed down to me by my mother (although her preference is for diamonds and rhinestones). Just try to get us through a department store without touching all the sparkly scarves while oohing and aahing over blinged out t-shirts. The more bedazzled the better.

So one recent summery morning I was immediately fascinated by these water droplets laced between the blades of grass in my lawn. All night long, spiders had been working on intricate webs in the grass. And then the morning dew came along and tiny drops of condensation formed in the nooks and crannies of their creations. The sun was shining at just the right height to light up the drops of water. Perfection. I grabbed my camera and macro lens and spent several minutes on my hands and knees in the wet grass. Now I have a photograph to check back on anytime I need a quick sparkle fix.

Please share your photos with us of anything that shines, sparkles, glimmers or shimmers. I know I’ll be oohing and aahing over here.

close up

Some days I need to get small, real small.  

There is magic to be found in the minute details of ordinary things.

So today let's get close, real close, and shoot some macro.

Amaze us with the details you find.

Need some inspiration?  Macro May is in full swing over on flickr.  Click on over and check out all the macro goodness. 

choosing what to focus on

Lately it seems like all of the various projects I have been working on are all teaching me the same thing. Funny how the Universe can work like that sometimes. I'm finding that the clearer I am, the more clear this truth becomes to me. What I choose to focus on becomes my reality.

I began the year with my trusted companion Simple Abundance, a gratitude journal and a creative journal, all of which I use during my first moments of quiet time after the morning shuffle of breakfast, packing lunches, and carpool. That 20 minutes I spend focusing on creating and maintaining the life that I want has made all the difference. My life just looks better. I know it's my same old life on many levels but with the right focus on the right thing the entire picture changes.

I suppose it's a perfect photographer analogy to liken a life's focus to the sweet spot in an image.

When these dangling water drops caught the light, all I could see was beauty. Each time I walked past these new tomato plants on my kitchen counter, the water glistened; winking at me. I couldn't ignore them any longer. With my trusty macro lens and my heart and aperture wide open I focused on what I wanted to see; the light, the clarity, the camaraderie, the determination, the beauty. I chose not to focus on the dirty dishes, the remnants on the cutting board or the water spotted window. Those things are all there if you carefully decipher the blurred background. But, they are not what I wanted to focus on and sure enough, you barely see them.

Amazing how that works.

Do share what you are choosing to focus on lately? Give us your picture.

The Art of the Vignette

I think my very first digital darkroom infatuation was the ability to vignette my images. You know, the method of manipulating the edges of an image in order to really make your subjects pop? For me, it was darkening the edges and I couldn’t get enough of it. Although I was having fun with it, it got a tad predictable, I will admit. As I continued to experiment with processing techniques I found other fixations. Textures, tones, saturation, or whatever my processing flavor of the day happened to be. Even after a few of years in experiment mode, I still don’t know what all the potentials are in processing and am still having fun trying new things. I do know what I like when I see it and I know that I shoot in waves of my own personal preferences and trends of whim. Maybe we all do. It’s just a part of the creative process I suppose and part of the fun for sure!

Although my love of vignetting still remains, I am beginning to enjoy challenging myself to build those vignettes into the shooting process. Natural vignettes can be just as intoxicating as their fabricated cohorts but I find they can be a lot less predictable which for me is refreshing.

I’ve recently begun toying with using a shallow depth of field in the foreground of my images as opposed to using it only in the background. I am loving the results! I am addicted to using my trusty macro lens and getting down at ground level, right up to my subject makes it easier to get that soft and lovely blur in the foreground. As long as my focus is on my subject (in the case above, the flower) and there is enough information in front of the subject that will be thrown out of focus with a shallow depth of field you can achieve these results. In this case, the edges don’t go dark but the softness of the bottom edge does do the trick of pulling your eye right to the subject almost as if it were framed.

I would love to see your vignette success stories, whatever they may be. Show us an image of when it really worked just as you wanted it to.

Superhero Photo Challenge: Abstract

Do you remember Highlights magazine from when you were a kid? I remember poring through it at the dentist's office or the eye doctor, always flipping as quickly as I could to the back section where the photography was. There was always a page full of photographs of things that were taken so close is was hard to decipher what the object was anymore- a tennis ball, a waffle, someone's skin. The game of course was to guess what each thing was.

I still have a love of the super macro and the indecipherable abstract image. This week's challenge is to capture an abstract image, either by photographing something extremely closeup or simply by seeing color and form in a new way.