Northern Lights

Last night the activity on my Facebook picked up with posts from an online group that the Northern Lights should be out.  At the same time a message from a friend came asking me if I was going out shooting and five minutes later, we were out of the house.  At first there was a little cloud cover and not wanting to waste a perfect evening we had a little fun with the pump jacks.

As the clouds moved on, the lights finally began to show themselves.

Thanks for visiting.

Sunday Still - Pink Tulips

The challenge is to shoot flowers from overhead.  I had this shot in my mind all week and had to make a trip to two stores just to find pink tulips.

And just for fun, here's a shot of my set up.

Thanks for visiting and have a great day.

Finding Studio Space aka Cleaning the Basement

Up until now, most of my still life photography has been done in the kitchen with a board over the sink.  It's been working fine, but we have a large unused basement, being wasted.  Being a hoader collector of too much fine junk and too many "I might use that someday"s, it is time to clean the basement.  New storage has been added and the new philosphy is that if it doesn't fit in the cupboards, it goes.  After many hours and trips to Goodwill, I now have a space in front of the windows to set up for still life photography.

This baking centre belonged to my husband's grandmother.  His father gave it to us a while ago and even though he had stored it outside for many years, it's still in great shape.

I've placed it in front of the south facing windows.  A strong light in the winter, but I think I can get around that.  Yes, the concrete floor really was painted teal at one time, but that's another story.

During the clean up. I can across a few lenghts of white plastic pipe.  I think they may have been used in the past for the plumbing for a fish tank. I knew I needed a way to filter or block the light from the south so I thought a rack made from the white pipe would work.  Off to Home Depot and $14.00 later (including tax), a few fittings.  The white pipe was then cut for the uprights, cross piece and feet.

Here's the rack assembled.  Nothing is glued, just stuck together. Lightweight, easy to move to either side of the bake centre and comes apart easily for storage. The curtains can also be closed to filter the light.  I also found a piece of white painted plywood that can be placed on top of the bake centre for a different table surface.

A trip to Micheal's to visit the half price bins and I am ready.

Here's my first photo using the new table.  This was shot into the south facing windows with the light being filtered with the above set up. The texture kk_cherish was added in Photoshop then the preset kk_litely added in Lightroom.

Thank you for visiting and I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

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Still Sunday - Fruits and Vegetables

The Be Still theme for the week was fruits and vegetables, and following Xanthe's colour of the week - yellow.

You know when you go to the grocery store to pick out fruits and vegetables you are supposed to pick a rainbow of colours and you always admire the person in front of you for eating so healthy, well it was quite interesting to watch my parade of yellow move along the checkout belt to the cashier.  All shades of yellow with a splash of green.

The set up was done in my basement in front of south facing windows with a late afternoon light. Light was also reflected on the opposite side to prevent dark spots.  Processing was done in Lightroom, using the Auto button, adjusting the exposure and reducing noise.

This was my favorite, with the LensBaby Composer and f4 aperture ring.

A couple of close ups

And two others I liked

Thanks for visiting.