Sauntering Vaguely Downwards
It’s been a busy few days, but I did manage to take a few photos (I have a list of things to photograph that I haven’t gotten around to yet), and some crafty things (you can see those below the photo thumbnails). The photos are of a few triffids in the sky, mostly roses, more of which can be found on Flickr.
I wasn’t planning on taking photographs today. In fact, I told myself this morning that I wasn’t going to because I had other creative things to be getting on with. That resolve lasted for about an hour, until I went out to get something from the car and spotted new triffids, so grabbed the camera. Then I thought I’d take advantage of the bright, blue sky and sun to take some pictures of flowers in the sky, at which point I was doomed because there were a lot of pictures to go through. So, hey, another photography blog post!
The great thing about these photos is that they look epic but are really easy to do. Backdrop that doesn’t have shadows cast on it, bright natural light from the sun, hold a flower up with your fingers, snap a macro shot. The hardest part is that your arms ache after a while, and you need to wear a cap and/or sunglasses to avoid the glare. There are a whole bunch more up on Flickr, along with the few aforementioned regular triffid pics.
I finished work, sorted some images, then fell asleep for five hours without meaning to. Clearly I needed the sleep, and now all the images are sorted and posted. There are the normal flowering triffids, and also strawberries. It’s a journey from the plant to ending up in my fruit infuser bottle filled with lemonade. They were delicious.
I’m going back to bed. More strawberry and flower pictures are up on Flickr.
Way more triffids than I thought snuck onto my memory card, so it took a while to sort them. There are more here because there are a whole load more in this batch up on Flickr. Mostly flowers, some cherries that may never get to ripen because the birds will be on them like locusts at the first hint of being edible, and some faded wooden sign shots. The wooden sign was originally made by me about 10 years ago, and was eventually replaced a couple of years ago with a more durable one – it hangs out so delivery drivers can actually see it easily. It was printed letters on wood covered in sealant, so I’m genuinely surprised it lasted as long as it did and the sign is actually legible. The mock orange is a different variety to the previous photos I’ve taken, blooming later. Most notable for being under my bedroom window along with a wisteria (which is really late this year, the photos I’ve taken have all been from the one around the back) and a honeysuckle. Smells amazing at night.
It’s been a beautiful day, and yes, I took triffid photos, but I’m not posting those yet, I want to take a few more before the sun goes down. Plus, I need to do some sorting of the shed before I get to have fun. Bah. Instead, we’ve got one of those moving sand art photo frame thingies, and I thought they’d make some interesting photos. It also apparently glows in the dark, but we forgot to test that before we went to bed last night. A couple more on Flickr if you’re interested.
Today has been so much better than yesterday that I’ve actually had the energy to take, sort and post photos to Flickr, and get a blog post up. Go me! Flowers (and some bracken) on a black background. Produced by putting black card behind the flowers, angling it so the background is as dark as possible (mostly cloudy day helped), and then tweaking the brightness and contrast a bit to make it properly back in post-processing. The tricky part is getting it so the background is dark enough to make editing the editing for impact worthwhile. There are nearly thirty of these, so head on over to Flickr if you’d like to see more.
Yesterday was not a good mental health day. I was in a better frame of mind by late afternoon, so took a bunch of triffid photos with the sky as a backdrop, because they please me. I was pretty exhausted by the time I’d got them sorted and up on Flickr (along with a few other random photos), so I opted to go to bed and do the blog post today. There may be another one later on as today I’ve been experimenting with black backgrounds, and I’ve got some regular triffid shots as more new flowers appeared. May be tomorrow if I’m still tired after sorting them all.
I wanted to do something different than the usual flower photography (mainly due to the fact there’s nothing new blooming just yet), so thought I’d try some flowers on a white background in softer light than the death ball in the sky. I’ve got a soft light cube… somewhere. (It’s the shed. It’s in the shed. It may never be seen again, though the preserving pan turned up at the weekend, so it may not be a lost cause.) As it wasn’t accessible, I decided to do some quick and dirty experimentation. I’ve put what I did below the thumbnails with a picture. Different plugin, the other one seems to have been abandoned and there were some annoying caching issues. No extra photos on Flickr as this was a trial and didn’t produce a whole pile of images.
Bunch of photos taken earlier in the week over two days. I’ve been sidetracked with playing Vampyr (I’m halfway through a review post for that, but it’s probably not going to be done tonight) and have only just gotten around to sorting and posting these now. The Flickr plugin seems to work a treat, so I’m sticking with that. Even more triffids to be found on Flickr should that tickle your fancy. Otherwise, enjoy what’s below.
I had plans for today, but have effectively been a zombie, hence the unimaginative post title. I did manage to take a satisfying amount of photographs, but it took until nearly midnight to get them uploaded and write up this pretty simple blog post. Jake still managed to help (see Instagram for the set of Jake photos), but a full battery and reasonable weather allowed for more photo opportunities. As always, see Flickr for a whole bunch more.