Marbles

Posted: August 4, 2014 | Author: Eileen Thompson | Filed under: photography, Still Life | Tags: bit of fun, close up, colour, drama, image, marbles, photography, reflections, sculptural quality, sparkle | Leave a comment

In my ‘artistic’ days when I did a lot of painting in water colour and oils, the subject I enjoyed most was Still Life. So, in the times that I’ve exhausted garden stuff to photograph, and when there are no ‘hoomans’ to hand, I turn to setting up objects indoors to get creative with. It’s essential not to have a distracting background, and in the absence of a proper studio, I bought a small Light Tent some years ago that came with a couple of spotlights and several different colour cloth backgrounds. It easily sets up on a table top, but I need to sort out my little ‘office’ so that I don’t have to keep setting up and dismantling every time I need to use it. I still have stuff to dispose of since downsizing.

Anyway – back to today’s offering: I have some marbles ‘donated’ by my grandchildren which I’ve photographed a few times before.

I placed some on a mirror tile and eventually managed to get them to stop rolling around …. what a palaver!

I guess it’s just been an exercise in using shapes, reflections and lighting. I do love a bit of sparkle, don’t you? Eileen

As usual, if you’d like to comment just click the ‘comments’ word at the end of the opening info of this post.

Enjoying the Sunshine

Posted: June 10, 2014 | Author: Eileen Thompson | Filed under: Landscape, Nature, photography, Portraits, Wild Life | Tags: birds, bit of fun, Canada Geese, colour, colourful, digital, drake, Ducks, feathers, Goose, Ifield Pond, image, image background, landscape, nature, outdoors, paintshop, Paintshop Pro, photography, photos, sparkle, sunshine, water, weather, Wild life | Leave a comment

As it was a bright and sunny day and I was stuck indoors doing nothing in particular, I decided to take a stroll down to the Ifield Pond again. Although the scenery is much the same [although changing with the seasons of course], at least the wildlife activity varies and there’s always something different to see.

Disappointingly I’m a bit late to catch the ducklings in baby stage – they look more like teenagers, but there still seems to be a lot of courting going on.

This is a particularly nice little area, favoured by the ducks and geese because people park their cars by the roadside nearby and come especially to feed them. In fact I got slightly wary of one particular large Canada Goose who approached me – I think he though my little camera was something to eat and was waiting patiently for me to throw it for him.

This very handsome drake ‘posed’ for me , but I took the pics as much for the interesting water as any ducks on it. I confess to doing a bit of enhancing to the colour, as the sun was so bright and sparkly on the water, and what with the reflections of the overhead trees – it was beautiful to see, but hard to capture. I liked the somewhat hazy appearance.