Bobbins in a Box.
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Apr, 2016Views
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Awards
Fall Award 2020
Peer Award
Outstanding Creativity
Superb Composition
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Superior Skill
Absolute Masterpiece
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Behind The Lens
Location
An old distressed wooden box, outside a craft shop in Chichester, West Sussex drew my eye. I'm always on the lookout for the unusual object or view that might make an eye catching final image, and I certainly thought this box, which turned out to be full of wooden bobbins just thrown in. The wood showed grain and traces of colour and I was sure I could make something out of it.Time
I'm not sure exactly what time I took the shot. I was just walking through town, and the shops were open. I'd guess it would be late morning, with the sun quite high, but this was one of those typical 'see it, shoot it' photographs.Lighting
The natural sunlight, from quite high in the sky gave me the shadows I like and the clarity of detail, I added nothing to the shot though I did some post-production work which might suggest there were was more thought given to the lighting than there actually was.Equipment
I wish I could tell you that this was shot on my Nikon D300s, but in fact I grabbed the shot with my iPhone 6s. To make matters worse ( or better, depending on your point of view) I did all the postproduction on the iPhone too!Inspiration
This year I set myself to take and share one photograph every day. This challenge has really made me think about my photography, and has me constantly on e lookout for my shot of the day. Some days it's a push to find one, and on other days it's tough to whittle it down to just one, but that's the deal. This was a shot that really jumped out once I'd cropped and tweaked it a little.Editing
I did some work on this image on my iPhone. I use Snapseed, and started with a tight crop. The image was then given a little contrast and detail, and I pushed a little tonal contrast to pick up the grain and to accentuate the colours in the wood of the bobbins. Sometimes the tonal contrast can give a result not unlike HDR, but treated with respect it can really enhance the detail in an image. It's really astonishing to me what I can achieve in Snapseed on my iPhone.In my camera bag
My normal kit is Nikon, and has been for many years. I have a D300s which is my workhorse,and I was going to get a new body this year, but have decided to get a Fuji X-pro 2, as I find the Nikon is just too heavy, even with my favourite 50mm f 1.4 on it, to carry consistently. As a result, I've been falling back on my iPhone 6s more and more for my 'photo of the day'. When I do take my Nikon out, my favourite lenses (along with the 50mm f1.4) include a 16mm fisheye Nikkor and a Sigma 24-200, which is the lens I take when I travel, as it's a do-it-all zoom, and delivers really good quality.Feedback
I know it's a truism, and I heard it so often when I was studying photography at college, but you will only get the photograph if you have the camera. How you get the photographs you want depends on what photographs you want, so if you know you'll have time and space to set up your shot, then you can have the luxury of taking a range of lenses, bodies, light stripes...even props if that's what does it for you. On the other hand, if you want to take candid shots, then you need to have something that will be easy to carry and will take the shot without fuss, so either an all-rounder lens, or a sensor that will let you crop without losing too much quality. That said, nothing finds you a good image better the teaching yourself to look at a scene and see the little bit of it that will make a good picture.
