52 Steps From My Front Door

      I have loosely started a 52 week photography project. I say loosely because I am not sure how long it will stick, I have tried these things before and it doesn't usually stick! This seemed like a good one to do though because it is one photo a week, with very loose themes, and a week is probably long enough for me to get something in rather than daily.
      Anyone looking to perhaps join in on this the group I am part of is here and the different themes for each week are below:

      Week 1 is titled 52 steps from your front door, I spent my new years day feeling very lazy with a bit of a cold. I finally left my house to go for a walk and stretch my legs around 8.30pm. I took my Pentax K70 with 50mm f1.8 lens to see what I could get wandering around in the evening. 

      I started with some fairly mundane photos of the streets, the shadows on the walls lit by street lights really intrigued me. 

      I live near an army reserve centre which is well lit. I thought all the shadows were very interesting so I wanted to have a play around with the multi-exposure feature on my camera. You can blend a huge number of photos but I stuck with 2/3. I have found it works very well with high contrast subjects and strong shapes.

      Playing around more with combining different subjects, pavements and houses!

      I love the depth you get in these images, but they were all quite abstract, seeing the bokeh effect from the street lights and car headlights I wanted to see what I could do with it.

      Switching to manual focus I was able to overlay shots with in focus cars and lights with out of focus bokeh patterns. These also had quite a dreamy misty effect.

      These two are my favourite but the above didn't quite make the cut because the trees looked very soft where I had overlain the same scene defocused. My chosen image below seemed to have the nicest composition of those I took, the road leads you into the image into a sea of bokeh lights with some sharp elements poking through behind.

       I am quite happy with how this set of photos developed, next weeks theme is "sun" so I imagine I will end up with something completely different. Still, I like looking back on my process and seeing an idea develop. Is anyone else starting new projects in the new year? Feel free to share in the comments! I love to see these things!

My little Box Studio

       So a few months ago I took some product photos for my friend Ellie of Eleanor Jane Jewellery. I wanted to set up some kind of mini studio to get nicely lit images at home and I wasn't sure of the best way to go about it. After speaking to people at work about the merits of soft boxes and box studios, one of them suggested I just build my own studio with a box and some white paper!
I had quite a large box from a delivery which I managed to open out. I fully lined this with white paper as well as cutting a window from the bottom of the box and a section out of one side. The window on the bottom I covered with 3 sheets of tracing paper and then flipped the whole thing over for the lamp to diffuse light through. 

       
      Now you are at this point all you need is a daylight temperature lamp, I just added this bulb to my angle poise desk lamp. And lastly a good background, whether it be pastel coloured paper or a long sheet of white pinned to the top back panel to make an infinity background. 

      I have had a pretty stressful few weeks so I decided to buy myself some flowers, though as a photographer rather than just stick them in a vase I pulled out a select few to photograph. 

      The daylight lamp works perfectly to get the right white balance, and you can move it forwards and backwards to get an even illumination on your subject. It isn't the most elaborate of studios but it works well for a lot of different subjects!!

      If you already have a lamp and a box like me this cost less than £10 to make, all i needed was paper and a bulb :). Worth a try and the results you get are great. 

The Snowman workshop

So today I was helping with a workshop at Plymouth university alongside a screening of "The Snowman" with Jo Larsen Burnett and   Katie Keith. 

The theme was obviously quite christmassy-we made a large snow scene for the kids to add their own objects and decorations to. 

We got them to make trees, snowmen and reindeer to go on the background. They could also make shadow puppets and draw images onto acetate to project onto the scene and move around. 

I loved how pretty all the shadows were, we all had a play around as well creating shadow monsters eating the reindeers (well that was just me) 

I also had a nosy at the Peninsula arts exhibit, which has a giant wall for people to draw on :) the kids put up a christmas message!

We pinned up all the things the kids have made to stay there over christmas. Was really fun in the end, I think I am secretly a child at heart I want to make more shadow puppets!

santas grotto

If anybody is in plymouth right now I suggest you go down to the Plymouth City Museum where they are have a santas grotto mainly decorated and designed by Plymouth Illustration students!! 

I Mostly did lots of snowflake painting and also had the idea of having 3D structures on the floor lit up by lights. These are some work in progress photos, I have yet to see it fully finished as I was going home for christmas!