click photo to enlarge
Circumstances have kept us fairly close to home in recent days. Yesterday, after struggling for half a day with an old laptop, trying to install Mint Linux on it - the machine was the problem not the software - I gave up and my thoughts turned to macro photography. I needed a pursuit that wasn't quite as frustrating as trying to make old hardware work with a new operating system.I don't consider myself to be a macro photographer and yet every now and then I like to do a bit. It's the different view of the world that the macro lens gives that interests me. With that in mind I set about photographing a pine cone that I have on the bookshelves in my study. I took it upstairs into a bedroom where the light was good and set up some black and white vinyl sheets as a curved backdrop. This needed weighting down so I used my wife's jewellery box. I took my shots and decided that, on the whole, they were extremely average. So, I looked in the box to see if there was anything that I could use for a shot. I took out a few silver and black necklaces and arranged them in an "eye" shape and tried different brooches as the "pupil". Today's photograph with a floral, enamel brooch in the centre was the best of the bunch. As I processed the shot on my computer I thought I'd try a few "effects " on it. I don't see myself as an effects person any more than I do a macro photographer: you'll find very few examples in the blog other than a bit of split toning. But, when I tried these radial rays I quite liked what they did to the image and thought they matched the subject quite well. It's a different kind of photograph from my usual fare, an approach that you won't see from me very often.
photograph and text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 2.5 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off
