week 23: Cat in washing bin

I made it almost half way through before I have a picture of my cat. It's quite a bit further than I originally thought I'd get, but I'm quite happy to have this one here. She is now (if the home we adopted her from was correct), about 7.5 years old, but still very active and playful like a kitten at times. Here she was "exploring" the inside of our pop-up wash bin after I removed all the clothes for washing.

I really haven't done any editing on this photo apart from convert it to jpeg and the very slightest bit of sharpening and curves - my fastest edit for this project yet in under a minute :-) Maybe I'll get around to my designed photo next week, maybe not, we'll see how it goes.

Week 22: staircase

I'm trying a couple of different things here. This is my first real black&white, ie the first one I've desaturated completely. Its also the first on I've not cared too much about the grain, in fact I specifically didn't remove any noise at all. I would never do that in a colour photo, but it suites the mood I'm trying to create with this photo.

I took it last Saturday at the Sommerset House in London. I was a little disappointed with the visit, I guess I expected more judging from their website, but one or two of the spiral staircase photos came out nicely and I did get to see Ai Weiwei's Zodiac Heads so it wasn't a complete waste.

I've also come to realise that I am currently a reactive photographer, I take the photos that are there, but I can't say at the point where I press the button I actually "make" the photo as that would imply (to me at least) that I preplanned what it should look like. I imagine that is much easier to do when you work with models and you can direct the photo, but also with a still life and I haven't done any of those for ages, so I think for next week I'll see if I can come up with an interesting idea for a still life of some kind.

week 21: forray into street photography

Well technically this photo was also taken at the Chelsea flower show, but I've been spending so much time in post process on it that I think it counts. I'm finding that I'm quite interested in digital art, not just straight photography, but I must admit trying to clone out 4 people, an umbrella and a wineglass that could be seen through the arches took more time than I'd like. But even so I like the dreamy effect - I just wish Flickr would stop trying to sharpen my photos (the bit that looks like noise through the arches) It is also one of the very few photos I've ever taken of a person, in fact I think its the only photo I've ever taken with the express purpose of capturing a person (not including private snapshots of family and friends)