Muki.Dorifuto.com Photography talk with random tangents into the unknown

They don’t like me because I’m fun

I entered a little photo competition the other week on Whirlpool. There's no prize, but I've never entered any of my work into any competition and I've been trying to put myself out there a little more.

The theme's competition was Solitude - "The act of being alone without being lonely". While the description given may not mesh with your definition of the word, I took ended up using it in a bit of a roundabout way.

So here's my entry, titled "They don't like me because I'm fun":

In true procrastinary style, I ended up taking it close to the competition deadline, so I ended up with household items. Perhaps a little too ambitious however, was the choice to try to go for off-camera flash.

I had at the time an old Hanimex flash that doesn't have complete manual control and a Canon 430EX Speedlite. Since I couldn't set the Hanimex, I bounced it off the ceiling and set my camera's exposure accordingly for the metal kitchenware.

At first, that was all I was going to do, but then I thought that the little plastic teaspoon needed to stand out a bit more aside from the distance. I didn't think it quite showed that it was alone or outcast from the rest. To highlight it, I dropped the exposure on the metal cutlery a touch and used the 430EX, just off to the right of the frame with a snoot on it.

What I didn't notice until I got it into Lightroom were the marks on some of the cutlery. Unfortunately, by then I'd broken everything down and simply couldn't be bothered doing it all again. The competition doesn't allow for editing of photos, only adjustments such as balance and levels, so they were left in.

While I didn't win, I'm pretty happy with the result. I've definitely learned a few things along the way, and managed to make it into the top 10 runner-up entries. On one hand, I think it may have been better to have adhered to the Keep It Simple, Stupid rule of thumb, and possibly pulled off a better photo with something I'm more familiar with, but I wouldn't have learned much, which is more important.