Brick and Shadow: Challenge Brick

Another thing I've been reading about is the power of side lighting. In my head, I always equated shadows with bad, but the pictures they use as examples are really stunning. So I thought I would try it.

It's very true that without the shadows on this stone brick, you lose most of the texture, and you don't get to see how rough and beautiful it is. I have to remember not to always shoot only in full light or full shade. 1/640 sec exposure, 4 aperture, ISO 80, 5mm focal length, macro on

Fill the view

A great little tip I read the other day was to fill the view with whatever it is you're shooting. You don't necessarily need - and often don't want - a lot of other background. So here's a great macro shot that does just that!

I love the way the individual fibres stand out, and how the whole image is just filled with that rich red. Can you guess what this is? That's part of the fun and magic of this type of picture!

Textures

Thus far, this was one of the hardest parts of the 30 Day Challenge for me. I thought texture would be easy, because I'm quite a tactile person, so I notice textures all the time. Soft like chinchilla fur or rough and raw like stone. The problem I had wasn't in finding texture, it was in finding interesting texture to photograph, and then figuring out how to capture it nicely. I'm going to share two different images of texture.

Originally I just wanted to take this because of the fabulous way the light made this ribbon look almost on fire! (It's actually a red ribbon, the colour on the right-hand side.) What you also see, especially on the right, is the texture of the ribbon. The light played with this ribbon so wonderfully, I may not put it on any presents, just so I can keep exploring it in photographs!

This second one is a stone from a tile-type table top. Enlarge the image to see this more clearly, but the front section of this tile in particular is incredible for the colours and levels. It's a particularly beautiful part of my table, both to look at and to touch. (There's actually another texture in here, although it's out of focus - right in the front of the picture you can see a couple of grey lines, which are cracks in the table top.)