You may be surprised to hear most of these shots were simply taken from my bedroom window. After going outside in the garden, most of the fireworks were hidden behind trees and houses. From my bedroom they were much easier to see.
If I had a SLR and tripod I could have used a long shutter speed and captured something more classical. I was working with a bridge camera so I decided to experiment with some more abstract shots.
I actually quite like the effect of some of the mono ones as well and I prefer the most abstract ones because there a bit different.
It was rather a weird day in terms of weather when these photographs were took. The sunlight was bright but being in the middle of autumn, the shadow directions were quite different from how they would be in summer. The shadows were also much longer due to the low sun. I enjoyed working with these unusual elements and found I had new ideas for photos.
Out of the whole set of images from the day, the ones of the red leaves were my favourites. I liked the strong light and vivid colours. The chicken images were fun to shoot also. The set works well together because there is similar lighting and tones.
I hadn’t used my garden for a photography location in a while and I had a few new ideas. Some of my first photography was of my socks on the washing line and I had done a black and white pegs shot on holiday. I used this for inspiration for the clothes pegs shot I took this time round. I think the bokeh and depth of field works quite nicely here.
The mono images work well together as a set. I enjoyed exploring some new ideas unrelated to nature. I had tried photographing the garden bench a number of times in the past but was not completely happy with the results. This time I was accurate with the angle and composition and realised it worked better as a black and white.
This is the second lot of images from my visit to my next door neighbour’s house after it had rained. This second selection has a theme of pets. Poor Alfie and Crystal wanted to go outside and I thought they looked rather cute, frowning behind the back door. In addition my neighbour keeps chickens. When she was collected the eggs and I took a picture of one in her hand.
I didn’t do a great deal of post-editing because the images were fine as they were. However I did change most of them to mono. I love the feel that black and white photography portrays. It gives a completely different mood to colour.
The weather had been pretty miserable so after the rain had pasted I visited one of my next door neighbours garden. I wanted to incorporate the rain into some of my images. One example was the skipping rope I found on a garden table, there was rain drops from the rain fall earlier which I tried to capture.
As stated in the blog title I worked with reflections and pretty things also. We have a pond in our own garden however it’s always covered with plants and there aren’t many reflections. My neighbour’s garden has a fantastic raised pond so I experimented with that.
I enjoyed working with plants for example long grass; this became quite dynamic when made into a mono image on Photoshop. Some of the other images looked great as mono also, they showed the shapes and textures much more evident.
In this second set of images from the autumn magic project I mostly focused on macro. I enjoy macro work in my garden because there are much more possibilities than regular shots. The reason for this is I can blur out the background if parts of the garden are untidy.
Macro work is one of my photography passions. I like playing with Depth of focus and photographing small flowers and nature. Just recently my bokeh work has developed from working with bright sun light coming through the fence/plants.
Although it is autumn there are many shots with bright coloured flowers which suggest it could be summer. I like challenging these types of perceptions, for example my winter photography last year included roses with snow on them.
I decided to have a wander around my garden to find new ideas for my photography. We have quite a big garden but after using this as photography location many times before, it’s sometimes hard to think of new ideas.
One thing that mixes it up a bit is the weather and time of year. Last winter I used the garden to take some snowy pictures. On this occasion I wanted to capture autumn. It was a round Halloween time so I tried to incorporate this with the spider web.
Also my neighbour’s cat Candy came round for a visit. She seemed to be eyeing our chickens but I snapped away and took quite a few of her. I selected one to be shown on my blog however it’s more of an abstract shot; you can just make out Candy’s whiskers.
