Week #2 of 52

 During the second week, my wife found a gift that she had with her as the subject for the 'Project 52' shoot. It was a bottle with a glass ship inside. The carving was so beautiful and I immediately knew that it would make a very good subject. We tried shooting it with the normal tube light illumination but the image that we got were very flat and did not impress us. Again my wife came with the brilliant idea of using candle lights for the lighting. It turned out to be a great choice and the resulting photos were pleasing for both us. The photo that I posted had the right amount of lights and shadows and hence made it to flickr.

The harder part of course was on making the choice for the posting. There were at least a couple of images that were good and the one above is something I loved a lot. The composition was spot on with the candle lights being placed in the corner showing the source of the lights and the shadows were also good. The reflection on the wall of the flame was the sore point and I felt it was distracting. Even Post Processing (PP) would not save those bokehs and hence the reason to reject this image.

Week 1 of 52

 

The first 2 weeks of any new project are the toughest. It is almost impossible to decide on what to shoot and there is also the nagging doubt of whether we are good enough for doing such a thing. The trick is to begin and hope that you will get the inspiration to continue. Believe it or not, the moment you commit to something, things seem to naturally fall in place.

I was forced to shoot tabletop photos because of the tight schedule at office which made me frantically search for subjects at home. This watch belongs to my wife & this was something that I really liked the moment I saw it. I had not considered it as a 'Subject' at that time but when I started searching for subjects at home, this was the second subject that caught my attention. Wait a second. Did I just say  it as the second thing that caught my attention? Yes indeed. The first thing that caught my attention is a 'Tanjore Doll' that was given to us during the 'Nalanku Ceremony' of our marriage. I used this doll with a background of our window screen to shoot a whole lot of pictures and some of these pictures came out real good. I always like to have choices and hence decided to shoot this watch as well just in case the pictures of the doll did not turn out to that good in the computer.

For this setup, I closed our window with a brown screen and allowed only a little bit of sunshine to pour in. The placement of the watch was tricky for it was never able to stand on its own and I had to struggle with it before it could be setup like this. The reflections were the ones that I really concentrated on and getting the focus right turned out to be a bit of a problem for the glass and the silver color of the watch frame made it tough to find a focus point.

Given below is the picture of the 'Tanjore Doll' that did not make the cut in flickr for Week #1. The color of the doll's face always gave it a soft feel and that left me a bit unsatisfied with the result. Also, a comparison with the watch picture made us (Myself & my best half) to decide it in favor of the watch.