I started this year with a goal. I was going to really focus on my photography and try to take better and weirder photos. And with that came one condition: don’t post any of them on social media. I’ve never been that good at social media anyway, so keeping my images to myself was no challenge. However, in keeping this promise to myself, I seem to have completely neglected my website. This website has always been a tool for me anyway, kind of a way to organize the things I think are special. That is why I’ll be completing my yearly website clean-up soon. Since I won’t be posting my photos to Twitter or Instagram, I’ll need the website to look as good as it can so that when I show it to people in person, it doesn't look like a total mess.
In the spirit of renovations, I think I’ll use today as an excuse to post some of the still-life images I’ve taken over the winter. Below is a collection of various experiments that I’ve done since the start of the year.
First is an image of a mule cup I took on a wavy copper backdrop. The goal here was to experiment with a new form of still-life backdrop. I created this effect by filling a tub with water and combining it with a metallic copper acrylic ink. After swirling the ink around a bit, it produced the effect shown above.
I was pretty happy with the result; however, I felt that the mule cup was a bit difficult to work with being as reflective as it was, so I decided to try again with something else.
Above, you see two images of a perfume bottle taken on a similar liquid copper background. This one was a lot more fun to shoot, and I was much happier with the results. The labels were recolored in post-production.
The next two photos are attempts at a flower still life. I was experimenting with backgrounds again, this time with wallpaper. The first image used fake flowers and a combination of paper stock from a craft store. The final result came out better than I could have hoped for. This was also the first still life project I shot using my grandpa’s old Nikon 50mm lens.
The second image is of a real bouquet of roses that I put together myself. I will admit I'm not the best at arranging flowers, but it didn’t come out that bad. The background is vintage 1970s wallpaper I bought on eBay and taped to a piece of cardboard. I will say that I like the background a lot better than the subject. I definitely need to find a use for it in the future.
These are just a handful of images I took at the beginning of the year. I definitely have a lot more ideas for the future. If you'd like to stay informed, you’ll have to keep an eye out on the blog, as I won’t be posting to social media anytime soon. Thank you so much for your time. Have a wonderful day.