For personal reasons, I’ve been unable to really keep up with The Daily Shoot over the past three or four weeks. I’m ready to step back into the fray again and in order to ready myself for the  next set of assignments, here are the last three I attempted.

For Friday 2 April (#ds138) the task was “Make a fashion photo today: a person modeling clothing, the clothes in your closet, an accessory that defines you, etc.”. I was somewhat late with this and so it wasn’t great:

Essentially a quick shot of my wife’s jewelry box. A bit muddy, methinks.

For Thursday 8 April (#ds144) I was actually first (“First!”), since I took it in the morning UK time. The task? “Put down your big, fancy camera today. Fully engage your artistic side by making a photo with minimal gear.” So, I took a shot of the new stump in my parents’ front lawn with my iPhone:

All I can say is, wow, editing a JPG with Adobe Lightroom is a different job than starting with my usual Canon RAW file. You can tell the original’s a JPG, that’s all I’ll say, but maybe it was the iPhone’s app that emails photos that was the problem.

For Friday 16 April (#ds152), the assignment was “Bright, vivid colors can draw attention and add "pop" to a photo. Make a photo that has vivid colors today.” Armed with my Canon Rebel XTi again, I hit the drive (literally) and shot the daffodils from ground level:

The shot turned out pretty ordinary in the end, but I do love the daffs in April in England.

Now playing:
Madonna - Borderline
(from The First Album)

A couple of days after the last Daily Shoot, I was again inspired to pick up the camera. The assignment for Tuesday March 30 (#ds135) was “Today's theme is the color green. Make a photograph dominated by green and post it.”

This time it was Perseus’ turn in front of the camera. There’s a wing chair our cats love to sleep on since it gets the sun in the morning. We’ve tried to protect it by putting a green towel over the fabric and a cat pad for them to sleep on. Without this elementary precaution, the chair would be covered with cat hair.

I like this photo for the big splashes of color: green, white and orange.

Perseus has certainly grown by the way. He’s now 18 months old and this is what he looked like when he first moved in, November 2008:

(The other two are Eurydice on the left and Aristaeus on the right, both 14 years old this year. On another cat pad, this time on the sofa. Again protected by a towel.)

To take my mind off my other news for today, let’s quickly write up my photo for the next Daily Shoot assignment, the one for Sunday 28 March (#ds133). The task? “Sunday Challenge: Backlighting in a scene can create drama. Make a photo with interesting placement of backlit subjects.”

The sun had been streaming in through the south-facing windows in our house all day and since our cats love basking in the sunlight, it seemed a good idea to try for a backlit cat image. Except... the little buggers were more interested in sleeping than posing with their back to the sun. Eventually though, I managed to snap Aristaeus, and decided to go for a tight crop to cut out all the extraneous noise of the floor, the window blinds, etc, behind him.

Definitely a “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” look. Or perhaps, “You think you’re so clever snapping your fingers, don’t you?”

I had a bit of a dip in photo productivity and I wasn’t ready to pick up the camera again for the Daily Shoot until Friday, March 26 (#ds131): “Think of a subject that starts with either the letter "D" or "S". Find it, and make a photo!”

For such a damn simple photo, it took ages to get it right, and I still think it’s not quite there. Oh well:

I called it Switches and Swatches, and it’s of the light switch by our front door: the swatches have been stuck in it for a while for us to make a decision on what color we want our front room. We haven’t yet.

Due to work and the crappy weather outside on Friday, March 19, I was late with this one from the Daily Shoot (#ds124) and so it was rushed. “Change your angle today. Make a photo from 1’ (30 cm) off the ground and post it.”

I quickly set up the tripod about a foot up from the level of the landing and took a picture of my little ‘fiction’ bookcase.

Nothing too brilliant; in fact, just mundane. Mind you, you can see some of the authors I’ve enjoyed recently: Mankell, Rankin, Pratchett, Lodge, Banks. Although you can’t see them properly, underneath the Lodge and Mankells are a couple of Astérix and Tintin.

The next assignment from the Daily Shoot was “Find something that's so old it's almost timeless and make a photograph of it.” (Thursday, March 18, #ds123)

I didn’t want to go the old calculator or slide rule route again. Perhaps the Curta? The objection to that was it’s a little weird and, although of its time, not really ‘timeless’ per se. Nothing for it, then, but this...

This is the celebrated Corgi The “Saint’s” Car, the Volvo 1800S, No. 258. Now hard to come by, but this is mine from when I was a kid watching Roger Moore on the telly in The Saint, in the 60s. By gum, he had a fabulous car. When I was older, much older, I bought a real one, red. And, no, unfortunately it didn’t have the Saint logo on the bonnet. But it was just as fabulous.

Here’s the box cover (courtesy of www.saint.org, I can’t find my box just at the moment):

The Daily Shoot for Wednesday, March 17 (#ds122) was either wacky or genius, I’m still not sure. “Grab your camera and walk 2 minutes in any direction. Stop. Find a photo worth making from where you stopped and post it.”

A two-minute walk is roughly 200 yards, maybe 250. I work at home and that would basically put me somewhere within our neighborhood. No chance of getting outside it at all. So, at lunchtime, I diligently set the timer on my iPhone to two minutes, stepped outside the front door and pressed Start. At the end of the driveway, which way? I decided to go up the hill since we always drive home from the bottom. At the top, a junction. Which way? Let’s go left, I thought. A neighbor just there was having some flooring put in, bang, bang. Felt somewhat self conscious lugging around this camera plus zoom lens in the brilliant midday sun. It’s a short little street-let and another junction. I decided to go left again. A couple of steps and the Marimba sound played on the iPhone. So, here, then.

What’s here? Houses, gardens, a couple of cars further down. Felt self-conscious just standing there, looking around, casing the joint. Hmm. On the other side of the street was one of the postboxes that serve mail for a dozen houses. It’s different than the one in between our house and my neighbor’s, newer. It had a bright red sign on the grey background. Let’s go for that.

I also took another photo, this one of the box for large parcels, as I wasn’t quite sure how the first would look.

Both were cropped a little from the originals, but I didn’t futz around with any other settings.

I felt bloody daft taking photos of mailboxes in the dazzle of the midday sun, so it was with some relief than I walked down the street to complete the full circle to get back home.

For Tuesday, March 16 (#ds121), the Daily Shoot assignment was “Today's theme is ‘3’. Make a photograph that features the number itself or otherwise represents 3 items.”

I was determined to take a photo outside today (sometimes I think it’s cheating to do too many staged photos inside). But what? I was stumped, plus my lunchtime was curtailed because of a delayed conference call. In the end, as I was leaving to go to rehearsal at 6:30pm, I saw a road sign that I’ve seen a bazillion times and decided to go for that. It was getting late, so the lighting wasn’t that great.

So, all in all not a brilliant photo, plus I was shooting into the sunset to a certain extent. It’s also fudged with to reset the white balance, to crop and straighten it, and to sharpen it all (I use the Clarity setting in Adobe Lightroom to sharpen). A bit scrappy.

I skipped Sunday’s assignment for one reason or another, and so the next time I took up the camera for the Daily Shoot was for Monday, March 15 (#ds120): “Trees and plants are great photographic subjects. Make a photograph of a tree or plant today.”

Perhaps a little easy this one, or maybe I should’ve spent a little more time on finding something else to shoot:

The subject was an indoor ivy that we’d just been given. Nothing too fascinating about this shot really: just green ivy leaves, a bit of bokeh, and the contrasting-colored wall. For a change, I used my monopod instead of the tripod.

Our assignment from the Daily Shoot for Saturday 13 March (#ds118) was “Curves, squiggles, and flowing lines interest the eye. Make a photograph dominated by a curvy shape of some sort today.”

Mehul at work has just bought himself a Nikon DSLR (a D90 if I recall — I’m a Canon-boy myself) and was asking for some help with it while I was in the offices at Glendale this past week. I was trying to explain bokeh and how the aperture has an effect on it (and probably confusing the poor chap), so it came to me that I should take a photo with lots of bokeh, to illustrate it for him. Here we are: my fave zoom at 135mm, with f/5.6 and some ridiculously slow shutter speed that necessitated a tripod. Plus I was holding up a white sheet on the right to reflect some natural light...

It came out pretty well, considering. I did take another at f/16 to show the difference, but I must have jogged the tripod during the eons-long exposure and it came out shaken. I was using a remote to make sure I kept my hands off, honest...

(Aside: the remote I was using was the Canon RS60-E3. It plugs into the side of the camera — I have a Canon Rebel XTi — and allows you to take either a simple shot, with auto-focus by pressing half-way, or a shot with shutter locked open (“bulb-mode”). Well worth the $20. You can even get Chinese knock-offs for about $6 on eBay.)

Now playing:
Orb - Into the Fourth Dimension: Essenes in Starlight
(from The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld)