Photography At Home
Photography is obviously a passion of mine and if you have looked through my blog you will we see how useful it has been combining it with my love of old architecture, in fact the two came together quite early on. For many years I had an account on Flickr, a photo sharing site which helped increase my interest in both subjects, it's always helpful to discuss and comment with others on a shared interest. Buildings in theory should be easy to photograph, as long as the light is right and you can find a good angle then it should be plain sailing, my tip is to try and find an unusual angle or something unique about the architecture to help create an interesting composition.
My passion for photography expanded to include items around the home, everyday objects that when viewed differently become interesting and with the English weather being what it is, it was also handy when it was dull outside.
Many of the photographs I have taken at home are shot in my bedroom using a mirror for reflections and a piece of dark cardboard for an effective background, the dark background contrasts with the object to be photographed and draws your attention, if a 'busy' background is used it can distract the eye, in contrast if you are photographing something dark try a plain white background, you don't need hundreds of pounds to create your own photography studio.
As it is nearly Christmas lets start with a few baubles and decorations that I have photographed.
The above objects are Christmas Disco Ball Baubles, not to everyone's taste perhaps but I thought they would look good reflected and against a dark background, the reflections seen in the baubles are from brightly coloured sheets of paper placed in front adding some extra colour to the shot.
The following baubles were bought from the giftshop at the beautiful St Martin In The Fields church in London, they are of London legends, Big Ben, a London Bus and the London Underground sign, instead of using the mirror and dark background I photographed them against a blank light coloured wall and tried to zoom in as much as I could to bring out the colour and sprinkled details. A tight zoom adds depth to a photograph by creating a blurred background and in contrast a sharper front, it can also be done with a blurred foreground and a sharper background as seen in the Underground sign photograph!
Moving away from Christmas I also own a few scale models including one of a replica of a car, a 1958 Plymouth, made famous by the film Christine, the story of a 'possessed' car, the film isn't the best but I did like the Plymouth and when I saw it on Ebay the price seemed right so I bought it. Returning to the theme of a dark background which I thought would help keep the bold red from becoming to bright and by keeping the angle low with a tight focus the photograph hopefully creates a sense of increased scale, we know the car is a model but I wanted to try and project it as full sized. As mentioned before, the tight focus creates a softer, blurred background adding depth to the photograph.
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