Your appointment with Friday

Welcome to our first photo prompt of the year!  (You can view last years photo prompts by clicking on the "photo prompt" category on our sidebar.)  Boy, am I excited for this one.....for a couple reasons.  First, Gloria is still on break, so we have the lovely Nely from the Pink Ninja Addicts as our guest for this week!!!  And just wait till you see her photos.....soooo inspiring!  Second, this photo prompt has so many possibilities, today I will be sharing some of the fun photography techniques I used to take mine, and next week when I share my project, I will have lots of ideas for different ways to use your photos.  So, without further ado, the photo prompt for this week is.....

The backdrop of our lives.

I idea for this prompt originally came from thinking about using layers, textures, and background photos in my projects.  So, I set out to take photos of my surroundings.  As I began this process I realized that taking photos of the moss that only grows during the winter (rainy season) in my backyard, the wood in my living room that I see every day, the shop lights from getting frozen yogurt with my nephew, along with all the other photos I took was documenting the backdrop of my life.  All the details that I don't often think about, but are there just the same.  Kinda cool, huh?!?  Well, from then on this prompt took on a whole new meaning.  With each project these photos find a home in, a piece of me that I hadn't used before is now present.

When you go to take your photos, look for the tiniest of detail, and then maybe step back and look at the big picture.....do you see something new?  What is present in your everyday life that you don't normally think about being there?  What does the fabric on your dress or bed comforter look like today?

Now that you have an idea of some interesting shots, here are a couple techniques I used for my photos.  I don't at this point have a macro lens for sweet Clem, so taking close-ups is a little tricky.  I found that changing the F-stop to 4.5 or 5.0 and then switching the Manual-focus ON, helped be "zoom" in to a specific focal point with the rest of the photo being blurry.  An example of this would be the photo of the raindrops and also the moss.  They are totally different styles of photo but I used the same technique on both.  Also, something you will find quite common in my photos is when I get down to the subjects level and shoot straight on or even sometimes a little up.  An example of this is (again) the moss photo.  During the summer I would not even question getting down on my belly to get a cool photo of the grass or moss is this case.  However, during the winter when the ground is sopping wet, you can either squat to try and get your shot, or like I did in my photo...hold the camera close to the ground and just shoot.  The cool thing about about the latter is that you sometimes get very unique framing.....try it and see if it works for you : )

See ya next week for Project Monday where I'll share ideas of how to use your photos, along with examples from my completed projects.  Have fun this weekend!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The backdrop of our lives. 
  

Hi everyone!  Let me first start off by saying that I'm super excited to be participating in this photo prompt!  When Carrie asked me to take photos about our backgrounds and textures, I immediately took to our backyard!  I started taking tons of photos because I was seeing so many fun textures and backgrounds!  I took a picture of the grass, a flower, a palm tree and a leaf!  It made me appreciate all the small things I usually take for granted.  Plus I got to explore my new backyard.  It was pretty fun being able to explore.  So I hope you show us your daily backgrounds!!!

Love, Carrie & Nely