I hope none of you will mind but I will be combining both of these projects into the one post. One of my aims for 2014 is to work on improving my photography; to take more photos and take better photos. I love photography but have never been great. Even with a good camera I don’t seem to get the right shot, whereas my husband can take brilliant photos, even on an iPhone! I’m sure with a bit of dedication and further practise, I will eventually get there and take shots I can be proud of.
So, to introduce these projects in case there is any one who is not familiar with them.
Project52 involves taking and sharing one photo per week every week of the year, run over at Practising Simplicity
There is also a Project365 involving taking a photo for every day but I felt that may be ambitious for me at the moment. I actually do take photos every day anyway, it’s just whether there would be enough good ones and whether it would be too much to keep on top of. So if I succeed in Project52 this year, I will be trying my luck with Project365 next year!
Here is my photo for this week – 52:1
Mr Z and his Arabic work book. As I mentioned in my aims , as well as photography, one of my family aims was to work more on the children’s Arabic so there he is making a good start on his handwriting practise.
The Better Photo Project is a linky that has started with a tip each week to help us to work on our photos. This week is all about natural light, something I definitely need to work on with my photos. I am often finding that my photos are too dark, and I am meaning to buy some more lighting to help with this indoors in the evening – but of course natural light would be a much better solution where possible! Food photography is something I do struggle with and am hoping to improve, so I thought I would take this chance to compare a couple of shots lightingwise – both are taking indoors but one is during the day time near to the window and the other is in the evening.
Day Time
Okay, so by no means perfect but the natural light coming in from the window has kept the shot quite light and allowed the colours to show up brightly. (This photo is from my #Ryvita31Ways post)
Evening
Despite everything I have tried to do with this photo, it is just not looking great and the lighting has a lot to answer for with it (Okay, it probably would have been better on a plain white plate too as it clashes with the background, I know I know…) These stuffed peppers actually looked nice in real life (and tasted nice too) but the picture is looking quite grainy and the vibrant colours of the peppers are not doing themselves justice. On the plus side though I think this hijab makes quite a nice background and I will be using it again on another occasion, in better light and with a more suitable plate!
My problem is that a lot of the time when I cook, it is evening so the natural light is all gone! Lighting definitely makes a noticeable difference though (As my blogging friends have kept telling me over the year when I post rubbish photos!) so I really do need to think about ways to work around this. Hopefully you will see some improvements over the year as I give myself a kick to stop taking pictures of food in low light!
Linking up to:
