Capturing Beauty

I think you probably know by now that I love flowers -- real and imagined. I lot of the art I create is inspired by flowers I see along my travels and in my garden. Up until last year I never picked them -- but left them in the garden for everyone to enjoy outside.

And something happened -- I'm not quite sure what -- and I decided to start bringing them to enjoy ALL day everyday. Now I'm taking pictures of them inside AND outside so I can remember the colors and enjoy the beauty LONG after they are gone.

 Today I thought I'd share a little about how I compose my photos -- when my backdrop and backgrounds are not large enough to hide what is going on behind the scenes.

Here you can see what my composition -- or still life -- looks like before I start shooting. I'm using the backdrop I created from a window shade and a piece of bead-board paneling left over from my studio remodel. Kind of ugly, don't you think?

 Look what happens when I zoom in using my iPhone and the Hipstamatic App. The colors pop. The background disappesrs -- and it's beautiful. You could achieve the same look by cropping the original photo and adding fun filters in Adobe Photoshop if you wanted.

Here's another view -- this time I added a beautiful vintage tablecloth to the counter. I love the folds and embroidery on it. Again, it looks pretty ugly with the background elements in the picture.

But -- look what happens when I zoom in. Beautiful light, bright flowers and the horizontal folds in the tablecloth really accentuate the vertical design of the purple liatris (or gayfeather). 

I really love this one with the vertical lines of the bead board paneling adding interest on the bottom right.

 And this one is a lovely close-up of little black-eyed Susie -- or Rudbeckia and some tiny details of the table cloth at the bottom left.

As you go about your daily grind -- capturing beauty with your camera or phone -- get creative with your cropping, backdrops and get CLOSER to your subject so you can really focus on them. Look at creating interest with vertical and horizontal lines -- and make sure you've got ENOUGH light so your subjects look bright and beautiful! And -- don't be afraid to take too many photos -- for this session I think I snapped 100 or more shots. It's easy to delete the ones that come out blurry or you don't like them but once the moment is gone -- it's gone!

THANKS for stopping by, have a GREAT and WONDERFUL week!