Setting for 2015's First Shoot

 Happy New Year 2015

That is going to take some getting use to.  Not that long ago 2015 was a far off date in si fi flicks.  Now its marking the start of my new year behind my lens. 

I am inspired by light this Jan 1st.

 Its really ugly outside, freezing drizzle, cold and the only warmth to be found is under my quilt with a book.  It just nagged on me so much I decided to see if I could create something new and fresh inside in my work area. 

I decided to drag out some of my quilt fabric and use as a backdrop, and what the heck, I even pulled out some black!

I went for gold tones and things that projected
that warm feel of the sun and garden flowers.  Now that I have discovered that fabric is not for quilting, I might have to buy some more with a different minds eye!  

This leaf image is Red Bud dried and its hanging from a clamp over my table with fabric way in the background.  Used Aperture Priority and got in close with my mighty macro lens.

 This blue flower is in front of some black fabric, but I could not resist using a little fractal brush with it.  It felt sorta flat and now it has more whispy breezy freshness to it.

This blue flower is fake!   Yikes, I had to resort to what was at hand.  All my flowers are fake. 

 Its not such a great photo stand, but it works.  My rolling drawers stacked with plastic containers for height, my foam core board and with all this in place I can move it around on the wheels.  Its pretty ugly but it works.

 I used a curtain rod to hold a lace cloth which I have pinned some fabric to as a backdrop.  Its really busy batik fabric but one of my favorite fabrics I have saved and I used it in the first triptych image.  You can see how the fabric just blurs away into softness.

I took a class ages ago from Brenda Tharp on Macro Photography.  It was so great and I remember quite a bit from that workshop.  One thing I got back then was this very cool arm clamp.  The arm is jointed and moves every which way and here its holding my redbud leaves with seed pods.   How I WISH I had gotten more of these when they were to be had.   

This is also how far I shot this from the background for the leaf photo.   With the large aperture priority, my subject as far from background as I could get in my small area and shooting close as I could get I managed to create some feel of outside. 

When I processed my images in LR and PS Elements I added some tweeks to those images but the real work was trying to create light.   One thing you can't see is the pole light I have.  Its just plain ole lightbulbs and the pole light has 3 lights I can point in different directions, honestly I think I paid $12 for it at Walmart.  

Now that I have documented something exciting for the first day of the year its time to hop on over to Flicker and post my work.   Happy shooting and Happy New Year.