365 ~ 11th ~ 17th April

Posted in 365, Fuji, FujiX-T2, photography, UncategorizedTagged , , , ,

Firstly, last week was golden hour week, and every night bar 2 was grey, this week a golden hour EVERY.BLOODY.NIGHT. 🙄🥴

But no good crying over spilt golden hours, on to colour week and this time we are focusing on white, a deceptive colour to photograph as camera sensors see everything in shades of grey and without using flash you end up with a muddy or greyish background, which happened on some of mine, but hey ho, every day’s a school day isn’t it? So here we go..

Day 101 ~ Pair. White has been referred to as the most powerful non-color! It is in this absence of color that we will turn our cameras toward this week. White can symbolize elegance, cleanliness, and purity. It can create a feeling of optimism, balance, and simplicity. However, that absence of color can also feel boring or cold and it can give a sense of emptiness or loss to an image. As you go through this week allow yourself to explore the many facets of White!

I chose Vinnie’s catsocks for this, his little white feet are so cute, and I love a good excuse to photograph the cats.

Pair

Day 102 ~ Exterior. (Macro Monday). I don’t have any fun macro equipment for my cameras.  I don’t even know if I have that feature on my phone. Instead, I get in as close as I can to my subject, see where the sweet spot is for my lens to auto focus, and I take a few shots.  Then, in post processing, I’ll crop the photo even further to give it a macro feel.  How do you shoot your macro photos?    

Hmm. Using a camera phone, auto focusing and cropping is a right clart on if you ask me, and that’s just not a macro shot, it’s a cropped shot. 🙄 How do I shoot mine? With a macro lens of course!

Exterior

Day 103 ~ Peaceful. We all have different definitions of what peace means to us.  We hold it, wear it, experience it or go to it and it brings us peace.  This past year has been especially difficult for many of us and finding some form of peace has sometimes been a struggle.  Being in nature taking photographs is one place where I find peace.  Show us through your daily photo what peace means to you.  And, since it’s colour week, try to include the colour white in your photo.

Well I got home from work and Phil was all stressed over his eyes, and Winnie had been annoying him all morning. Winnie had cystitis too, an on and off problem with her. I grabbed my camera and headed out to do my photo and gather a little peace into myself. I knew I wanted to photograph the blackthorn blossoms for this prompt.

Peaceful.

Day 104 ~ Oblong. Have you been enjoying looking for “white” this week?  White is such a clean and pure color. Look around for an oblong shape today. It can be any elongated object that is rectangle or oval in shape. I held up this bar of soap in front of the bathroom window to backlight the photo, and I held it in my palm for contrast. How can you highlight your oblong object today?

Now an oblong is such a bonkers thing as it’s not a noun but an adjective. – A rectangle is a noun referring to a specific type of shape, while oblong is an adjective used to describe shapes or forms. A rectangle can be characterized as oblong. When referring to a rectangle, oblong can be described as when one set of parallel sides is longer than the other set. An elongated or oblong square can be classified as a rectangle, while an elongated or oblong circle can be classified as an oval. This did my head in. FFS’s rectangle or oval would be sufficient, seems to me oblongs are completely superfluous but if anyone’s got a use for them please tell me how! I didn’t know any of this until after I took my picture, which isn’t really an oblong. Oh well that was another school day!

Oblong. (not).

Day 105 ~ Limitless. By this point in the week, you have probably discovered some of the challenges of photographing the color white. Photographing white is all about capturing the perfect balance between highlights and shadows. Creating a monochromatic image can help turn your eye to these things.This image is cut class against a white background. Though my subject is not white, Photographing against the white background challenged me to pay attention to the form and details of each of the pieces of glass. Shooting through layers of glass against the bright background can can create a feeling of the absence of boundaries. Experiment with monochromatism today. Play with shapes and textures. Pay attention to highlights and shadows. The possibilities are limitless! 

Well I completely cocked this one up. I kind of ignored the ‘experiment with monochromatism’ bit and also I got hooked up on ‘limitless’, thinking that was the prompt when really she meant the possibilities with mono are limitless. 🙄 My bad. I should have been photographing glassware by the looks of a lot of other peoples photo’s. So I did my picture, then realised at the last minute I’d messed up so converted it to black and white, which is not quite the same as monochromatic, sigh.

Limitless.

Day 106 ~ Flower. If you find a white flower, remember to set up your white balance on your camera so that you get a true white, and not yellow or blue.  Manually set the settings based on the situation in which you are shooting.  Auto WB setting has a hard time with true white so it is better to have a few test shots to see if you can get your white right in the camera. Have fun finding out how to get the white right!

At least the prompt was not ambiguous. It wasn’t easy to ‘get the white right’ although the white of the flower is OK, the background seems a little blue to me. Still it was fun trying!

Flower

Day 107 ~ Comfort. White is a positive colour associated with purity, innocence, light, goodness, heaven, safety, spirituality, sincerity, humility, understanding and perfection. Take a photograph today of something white that gives you comfort.  Find something beautiful and simple and positive in your world.

Tea. Medicine for the soul.

Comfort

So a bit of a mixed bag really, I am not winning at white, and it’s something I will have to go back to at some point. White on white isn’t easy, and I will be looking into it for next year. Stay tooned for next week, which will be adventures in ‘fill the frame!’

103 thoughts on “365 ~ 11th ~ 17th April”

  1. Morning Fraggle! You learn something every day. Today, well, it was oblongs. The choice of that word was pretty stupid. I can’t think of many oblongs in real life. And technically, an actually oblong is 2D, so…

    White week. Surely can’t of helped in the cover up of all that powdery substance you were denying last time. Credit where credit’s due, you did a pretty good job.

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  3. When I used a canon T90 film camera, it had a setting for ‘Shadow/Highlights’. That was how it described a setting for shooting a polar bear on snow, or a black cat in a coal hole. It was a good setting, and I have never seen it bettered in a digital camera. The only thing I know about shooting white subjects is that no two whites are ever the same, and using exp/comp to render one part ‘pure’ white can often give that blue/grey tint to the rest of the photo. I think you did a great job, and the cat’s paws are perfect.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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  4. Agree with Pete; good job on this assignment, and the cat’s paws are the best. Here in Scootland, we have two cats, tuxedo cats, and they have little white gloves and boots, like flick-knives or weapons, but very soft and tender when they want them to be. Could look at pics of paws all day.

    Who cares what an oblong is? Who makes these rules anyway? You’re an ARTIST, take no instructions from anyone? I think these pictures fully explore the idea of white.

    As you note, this week was golden hour every night, until today….

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          2. A couple of years ago we had mice living under my shed, used to leave a bit of bird food out for them and they’d sit and nibble at it, they were quite cute, I have photos of them alive! They moved out in winter and never came back.

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          16. I will represent myself if neccessary, and my legal team will be handling this matter as soon as they graduate, so it would be precipitous to say more at this juncture.

            As if I would fake an award for myself? The very idea…

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          17. Who are your ‘legal team’? Your cats? I would also like to say, if you did create a fake award for yourself, that’s pretty impressive. It’s a good idea. Just give me a second – I’ll be right back…

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          18. I lavished a few fake awards on Alex this morning, and he rolled over to have his tunny tickled.

            My legal team are cats, do you have a problem with that? No time for anti-cat sentiment here.

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          19. I saw. An embarrassing display of emotions.

            I don’t have a problem with your legal team being cats – am I concerned if garden cats are involved, however.

            Finally, is Alex a cat? It’s not outside the realms of possiblity.

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          23. Red card Otsy! Do not besmirch my photography blog where people come to admire my pretty pictures. Squabble elsewhere because you’re booming my stats and I like to be under the radar!

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  5. There’s something kind of creepy about these prompts sometimes, don’t you think? I keep wondering if there’s going to be one for red and it will say “You’ve just been horribly mutilated in a car accident, with your leg only hanging from a thread of gristle. Blood everywhere. How inspiring! Just think of the possibilities! Don’t just lie there bleeding out waiting for the ambulance, get your cellphone and paint with this rich material of life before you lose consciousness (or expire!).”

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  11. Congratulations on a great ‘white’ week.
    The cat’s paws are beautiful! You can feel the softness in his/her fur.
    Your exterior shot is dreamy, with such soft colours.
    The blackthorn bush makes me jealous, but finally, some blooms are appearing here too!
    I think your ‘oblong’ photo is wonderful; well done. (I have the same mouse!)
    I love the use of your little people; it fits the prompt perfectly!
    The flower lovely, with great use of negative space.
    I think the teacup is my favourite – again, such soft light!
    I love your very artistic approach to some of the ‘stranger’ prompts. Good job! 🙂

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  20. The light separation on “Limitless.” is really cool. Great job! Also, did you just modify your comments to fill the whole screen on the web layout? Don’t remember this being like this last time I commented.

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  21. Gorgeous photos, as usual. I especially love the blackthorn blossoms. For the first one – so was it shot with a macro lens or cropped through your phone camera? Either way it looks great!

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  23. Cool shots despite some ambiguous briefs. Ironically, because of the way camera sensors work, to get a pure white colour you actually need to use a neutral grey colour as a reference point. And that’s why I always shoot in raw and attempt to correct in post-process. And then there’s the whole quagmire of display calibration and colour spaces. Lots of fun!

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    1. Thanks Otto, yes I did struggle trying to get the backgrounds white, and so I’m not totally hapy with my efforts, but I’ve been reading up on it and have a better idea how to go about it next time I need to do a white on white shot! Every day’s a school day!

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  26. Love the flower pot, fence, and flower images – beautiful, makes me smile, my eyes linger. And of course your beloved cat is exceptional! Thank you for sharing your art Fraggle, it’s uplifting, C

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