This week was ‘isolate the subject’ week, and hasn’t been too onerous, although there has been a couple of AFAC’s to deal with. (to anyone new an AFAC is an airy fairy abstract concept!) Let’s begin!

Day 164 ~ liquid. ~ I love capturing movement in water. I find it to be very challenging and I’ll take numerous photos just to get the one I want!  For this photo, I tried something I saw on Facebook.  I filled up a water balloon and put a pair of sunglasses on the balloon so that it looked like a face.  I used a pushpin attached to the end of a stick to burst the balloon with the hopes of capturing the burst with the sunglasses in tact and before the water dispersed.  It’s a lot of fun (but messy)! Have fun playing with liquid today, even if it’s just a photo of your morning coffee!

TBH she wasn’t that successful if the example picture she used is anything to go by, but kudos for trying. I don’t have water balloons and had my own idea for this anyway. (Was thinking of you April! 🤣 ).

Day 165 ~ magnificent. We are learning how to isolate our subjects this week to make them stand out. There are many ways to do this: composition, colors, depth of field. Today is Macro Monday so we are going to really get in close to the details. In my subject photograph, the bee is highlighted by the depth of field I used and the color of the flower as a contrasting pop. I was using my 100mm macro lens and I had an f-stop of 4. If you want to really isolate your subject using depth of field, the wider the aperture the better. I stayed with f4 so that the flower would remain in focus. Excited to see what you find today!

Here we go with our first AFAC. Isolate a magnificent subject or isolate it magnificently? Who knows? A bee on a flower wasn’t an option, too cold this day. It was also a really full on not that good a work day so I wasn’t in a great place when I got home. The only thing of magnificence I could think of was Phil’s last model he built and painted, so I had a word with him and we set up a shot so I could isolate one of the figures stood on it, he’s particularly pleased with the uniform he did on this chap. It’s 1/35th scale which means he’s about 5cm tall.

Day 166 ~ Up. ~ Do you remember how much fun you used to have as a kid looking up at the clouds and finding butterflies and fish and boats and dragons?  As adults, we all might benefit from taking a few moments to look up and use our imagination to see what is happening up there in the clouds.  You never know what might be smiling down on you! Today, give yourself the gift of a few moments to sit outside with your eyes to the sky.  Photograph the magic you find in the clouds.

Well not exactly an AFAC as it’s a pretty specific prompt, but unless you are lucky enough to have a clear blue sky with one cloud in it, that’s not an easy isolation task! Lots of clouds but nothing making a picture that I could find though I’m usually pretty good at that. So I kind of ignored the isolate bit and just went for the clouds. We’ve been having some cool sunsets this week so I waited until 9.45pm to do the shot in the hope of another one. It wasn’t so spectacular (of course 🙄 ) as the previous two, but it scrubbed up OK in post. As an added bonus there’s a blackbird tweeting on top of the house, he looked pretty isolated. Job done!

Day 167 ~ Reinforce. ~ A good way to isolate the subject is to use a wide aperture, (a low f-number), and by making sure that the focus is on the subject that you want to stand out.  By doing this, you will make both the background and the foreground blurred. I reinforce this in my composition by using the rules of thirds.  It is also important to make sure that your horizon is straight.  You can do this when editing, by cropping and rotating the image slightly. The red against the green helps to make the subject pop. What can you do to reinforce your subject today?

Making sure your horizon is straight in camera when you take a picture is less time consuming! Wonky horizons really annoy me. It’s careless and lazy photography and quite amateur IMHO. Not that I’ve been very H during this 365. 🤣 Anyway ‘reinforce’ annoyed me initially, but I got what she meant so let her off. Had to do this after another pants day at work too. I chose a buttercup that had escaped Phil’s mowing of the lawn, and ‘reinforced’ it as described in the prompt, rule of 1/3rds, wide aperture, but did a moody B&W on it in post, as the yellow/green combo didn’t really do it for me.

Day 168 ~ Loud. ~ Today we are isolating the subject and using the word loud.   As a Hard of Hearing person, the two words ‘isolation’ and ‘loud’ resonate “loud and clear for me’.  As a HOH I often feel a sense of isolation and ‘loud noise’ is simply not an issue for me. For my sample photo,  I focused on and isolated my hearing aids.  By doing this, I put myself in blur in order to represent the fuzziness and isolation I feel due to my loss of hearing. There is good noise and bad noise.  Loud noise pollution occurs when unwanted sounds enter the environment.   Loud noise can also be beneficial.  Who doesn’t like a loud belly laugh, the sounds of children playing, birds singing, music playing, and waves crashing?  Take a picture today that represents ‘LOUD’ to you and remember to isolate the subject.  Loud doesn’t have to be sound!  You may prefer to represent loudness by photographing something that is a bright colour or garish subject!

This one from my fave prompt lady, who wasn’t wearing one of her cocktail dress in her picture sadly. Anyway, good to see she has some decent hearing instruments. Loud is a no brainer for me, Phil loves to listen to his music at a volume that is too much for me (unless I’ve had a fair amount of wine) so when he’s playing it I wear my headphones and listen to youtube tutorials or some such up in my little work room.

Day 169 ~ Strength. ~ One of the simplest ways to isolate your subject is to remove the clutter from your image. This allows the viewer to know exactly where to focus their attention. You can do this by zooming in or using a tighter crop in post-processing.Try using this technique today to highlight something that symbolizes strength. As with the prompt photo, by cropping in close the only focus is on the caterpillar. Seeing him hanging precariously on the end of a stalk snacking away shows the strength in those little legs. With the word strength, you could go literal and show the use of brute strength or figurative with something that helps gives you strength throughout your day.

Another AFAC, though not a really annoying one. I chose a wildflower, as my little ‘weed patch’ as Phil calls it is up and running this year after a complete disaster with bee bombs the year before. I planted some wildflower seeds at the beginning of April, and there’s loads of wildflowers coming up, though mostly Lady Phacelia at the moment. “Wildflowers are, without exaggeration, the unsung heroes of the planet; they are a powerful force that truly sustains a complex web of interdependent creatures. Without wildflowers our planet would not only be a sadder place, but life as we know it would not exist.” I read that on motherearthnews.com. I forgot about removing the clutter from my image, there’s a fair amount, but I think I isolated the Lady quite well anyway. Also today in the garden I was inspired to do another Haiku! Re: European Footy match.

Scotland and England ,
rowdy, drunk boys singing loud.
I wish they’d shut up.

I’m winning at Haiku! 🤣

Day 170 ~ Morning. ~ This adorable giraffe is lovingly nicknamed “Sugar Lips” and resides at one of my dear friend’s houses.  Sugar Lips is a tall girl riding a bike with a basket in the back to hold a plant.  Isn’t she sweet??  I was lucky to have her company when I recently visited my friend for a scrapbooking weekend.  The morning sunshine poured in on her and welcoming the day for both of us in such a warm way.  Today, share with us what makes your morning warm.  Maybe it’s a pair of cozy slippers, or a cup of coffee, or tea.  Remember to isolate your subject! 

Hmm. The picture of the giraffe sculpture thingy is about as adorable as a Pit Bull in fight mode, but each to their own I guess. Had to laugh at this one, here at Fraggle Towers we don’t really do mornings at the weekend but I tried. Got up, fed the cats, had breakfast à la Chef Phil, washed the car and then found it was just passed noon and I’d missed it. Doesn’t matter, I shot a ‘morning’ coffee with my book and pretended I’d done that earlier. 🤣

And that’s a wrap for this week. I quite enjoyed it, my fave shot is the nail polish, that took a while to get right (and a few bottles of polish!) and it came out well I think. And so we come to yet another sodding selfie week. Sigh. I’ve had a look at the prompts for the week, and I’m not fired up at all, I’m mostly annoyed. 🤣 Stay tooned!