The theme for 52Frames this week was to “Get Low”. That would typically be the kind of theme that would make me take my camera on a walk and try to get familiar places shot from another angle. But it snowed pretty heavily in the past few days – we got more than 20 cm of it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much snow in the city! While it’s still a very reasonable amount of snow compared to other places in the world, going for a walk on slippery surfaces lugging a fairly expensive camera that already went in service a few months ago seemed like a Bad Idea™. So I stayed home, and looked at the snow on my balcony.
It turns out that said balcony is partly protected by a bit of roof, and that the snow distribution showed it very well. My first pictures were of the snowed-in balcony chairs (which look exactly like a miniature car under the snow…), but I ended up going for a more abstract shot that showed the texture of the snow better.
And I even claimed the extra credit “Leading Lines”, because, well, I accidentally got one in the shot 😉
Obviously, for the 52Frames theme “2020 in a Photo”, my first impulse was to take a picture with a mask and my surgery scar. It felt trite, and not necessarily what I needed to remember either (because I will anyway).
This year was also the first year we’re not visiting family for the end of the year festivities. As an almost direct consequence, this is also the first year we have a Christmas tree in our home. We also made a bunch of sweets, because it’s Christmas 😉
And there was a distinct need for coziness too – which means that we recently got a couple of armchairs, and we replaced the bulb sockets in the living room by proper light fixtures – dimmable and color-controllable.
This was a weird year; this was an unusual Christmas. Not everything was bad about that (well, I even had a very couple of Christmas days 🙂 ). And for the first year ever, I did 52 weeks of 52Frames.
The theme for the penultimate week of the year of 52Frames is “Black&White Minimalism”. I was initially thinking of using my fountain pen (which is black with a black nib) with a large amount of white paper negative space, but I thought the shot would be somewhat more interesting with a sliiiightly bit more elements in the picture. After a few iterations, that’s what I ended up with! Which is probably the most on-the-nose interpretation of the theme I could have come up with, but I quite like the image 🙂
The theme for 52Frames this week was Texture, with an extra credit of Macro. I made broccoli biscuits yesterday and, while this is by no means good food photography, it feels quite original for a “texture” picture 🙂
I’m super tired, but I didn’t break my 52Frames streak – theme this week was “Choose one color”. Of course I choose red. And I have shiny new red Christmas baubles.
Another early-ish submission for 52Frames this week – I’m getting surgery tomorrow, and while I should be back home the day after that, I’m not risking my 48-week streak 😉
The theme was “Nature”; my initial plan was to go on a walk, but the combination of gloomy weather and a new World of Warcraft expansion foiled that plan 😉 Luckily, despite living on the 5th floor with a concrete balcony, “life…. finds a way”, and I have more than a few things growing between the stone slabs of said balcony.
It was also an opportunity to test my brand new Platypod setup – I did need a support considering the late hour and low light, and the flower was definitely too low to be able to get something with a standard tripod – Platypod to the rescue! It worked well, but turning the knobs of the tripod head was kind of awkward, and I had messed up the place of a screw, which made putting the fourth foot of the plate impossible without getting tools (and I got lazy). So this was actually a real tripod 😉 And that’s a good thing too, since the extra-credit was for “Use a tripod”, so, there, check 🙂
I was in Winterthur for a German certification exam this week and, since I had a very large break between the written and the spoken part, I took my camera with me. I didn’t take many pictures, but I knew I wanted to try to get something for the “Circle” challenge.
The building first caught my eye because it had circular reliefs – which, upon approach, ended up being disappointing. But there was also a traffic light with a circular mirror that reflected said building, and I was very happy to catch that!
I must have looked a bit awkward, taking pictures of a traffic light – but I don’t care, I actually like the picture very much 🙂
The theme for 52Frames last week was “Mobile Phone”. My camera was in service for most of the week – great timing ;), but I snagged that one on my way back from fetching it from the shop after it got repaired. The contrats between the green traffic lights and the red cars (and their reflections on the tunnel walls) was what initially caught my eye, but I like how there’s multiple, very different sources of light on this picture 🙂
In a sense, this is not a picture that showcases where a phone camera may be particularly strong; in another, well, I did have my DSLR with me, but no lens or memory card, and my eye did get caught by the lights – so it was a case of “the best camera is the one you have with you” 🙂
I knew I wouldn’t have much opportunity to take my 52Frames picture this week, so this one is kind of placeholder. The theme was Reflections, with “Mirror” as extra credit – which I claimed. We were traveling by car earlier this week (a fairly rare thing), and I snapped this on the Autobahn. And, for a phone snapshot without edit, I think I got lucky. The electric lines that lead to the mirror feel PARTICULARLY lucky.
It’s not a great or even a good shot, but it’s a shot, I still have my streak, and getting closer and closer to get the full streak for 2020, which would be nice 🙂
Round is the last image I got for this Hunt, and it’s my favorite one! It’s weird, it’s nerdy (there was a strong HAL 9000 inspiration.) And I could take bets on people having no idea how I made that image, and…. that makes me weirdly happy 😛
The whole process started, funnily enough, with the lens. It kind of popped in my mind that my camera is a full-frame camera, and that I do have a couple of lenses that do not cover the whole sensor. Hence: very strong, round, black vignetting. I started playing with what I had, and came to the conclusion that the strongest vignetting I could get was with the 18-55 at 18mm. This made things a bit awkward, because it’s a wide aperture… and at this point, I also had vaguely in the idea that I wanted to use my crystal ball – which is not that large (but which is round) too.
I then rummaged into my collection of random stuff, and I ended up with the following props:
A tube that’s a bit bigger than my crystal ball, a couple of tape rolls that are EXACTLY the right width to serve as crystal ball support, and one of my faithful Lume cubes with color filters. Well. It actually started with no filter, and then a green filter, and when I looked into the first images, I excitedly went “WAIT IF I TAKE A RED FILTER I CAN DO HAL”, so from there I had a precise direction.
It also took me a few attempts to setup everything in a way that made sense (I initially didn’t have the tape supports either) and to finally just plop the camera on top of the tube to make a tunnel and see what I would get there.
The final hurdle was the strong magenta reflection that’s still a bit visible in the image I submitted, but that I decided I could live with. I tried to fixed that one by trying to orient things differently and playing with the white balance, but without much success.
I had a lot of fun making this image; and it might actually only completely make sense in the context of a SOOC challenge! Still, I couldn’t resist the temptation to do an edit from RAW to see what I can get from my image source 😉 And to see that that stupid magenta fringe was an artifact of processing of my camera! I hadn’t expected that. And if you think I wouldn’t take the opportunity of the postprocessing to edit a brighter spot in the middle, think, think again 😉
And for the final album of the reveals on the Scavenger side: Round.
