Hello!

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been creating mini photoshoots of my own to get back into the swing of things.

This week I bought a bouquet of really pretty roses from Trader Joes. They soon became my first subject.

I take pictures of the flowers in my house all the time, and I post them to my instagram accounts. My phone is full of flower pictures. Anyway, I just spent about 10 minutes and took 50 images.

We are in a time where everyone owns a camera. We are all walking around with one in our pockets, and every person is a photographer. The only way to stand out in this profession is to show our own personal view, or vision. The way I see things has to be different or special in some way, otherwise anyone is able to take the pictures I take, for themselves.

My goal is to show you the world from my point of view. To show you what I see, whether its an object, a person, or a view that I’m looking at. It could also be documenting something, which I’ll talk about later in another post.

I’ve said this before, but photography is not creating something, but rather it is the process of me finding something out of everything and showing it to you.

I used only natural light, no bounce.

For a better experience, click on the images!

This is what I got, and my process in getting them:

This is the basic picture, but I wanted to edit them a little differently, to evoke a different mood for each. Not only does the vision need to be unique, but so does the editing. I’ve edited for other photographers in the past, and it was difficult to find my own style after that. Feeling like I lost my own style, because I was working in other people’s preferences. I really want to play with finding what I like my photography to look like. I have ideas for presets and new ways of editing.

In this post you will see a variety of different editing, this is purposeful, and not inconsistency.

I found this image in post, and it made me think about framing. So often we just start shooting away, and capture images, thinking we can crop later in post. However, since I learned the art of photography with film, I never really developed the habit ot post framing. Clearly, I wasn’t really looking into my frame in this image, because the dish soap made it into the picture. The more time we put into capturing in-camera images, the less time we spend in post editing. Just saying.

As a side note, I do see things after that I will crop into. The next picture is an example.

I thought this image was pretty, but as I was looking at it I noticed the roses up in the right top corner and cropped into them. I liked how soft and airy they looked and could almost use them as a slightly abstract background for something else.

Seems pretty to me

Photography really requires us to have a vision, a foresight, and to actually be in each moment. I always try to stop and look, really look at the scene. What way can I look at my subject that is different. I’m searching for different angles, different thoughts about what the subject is, or taking the time to really see what I’m looking at. What story will I tell about what’s in front of me.

Yes, I really do think about all these things while I’m shooting.

Something else I was thinking about was the focus. What is important to me about the subject. The focus is me forcing you to look at what I want you to look at. I love playing with the focus when I’m shooting still life. I prefer a very shallow depth of field, because I like to feel like I’m snuggling up into the subject.

Like this:

Same picture, just a different focus.

Snuggle up in there! Shooting into the light made it possible to “see through” some of the petals.

The way we edit can change the way we feel about the subject.

I would say, naturally these last images are my favorite way of shooting. I like to break some rules, I’m obsessed with shooting into light, and crawling around trying to look at things a different way. I always say, that if I am shooting a landscape, it always turns into me capturing a picture of a blade of grass with a ladybug on it. Details are what grab me, and grandiose scenes are sometimes a little lost on me.

Please enjoy the last few images. My goal here was really just taking you for a little ride through the roses, I hope you had some fun looking through them.

Thank you for stopping by!