You Show Daily #8: repeating pattern

Yesterday’s You Show Daily was to take a photo of an interesting repeating pattern. I decided to mix that with one of the suggestions from week 2 of the You Show, to try taking images from unusual angles. I did two sets of images for this daily create, both with repeating patterns and unusual angles. I did both of these with my phone camera.

The one I like the best is this one:

This is an image I took of window blinds, looking from the bottom up. I discovered that they aren’t even, because when I tried to get the bottom of the picture even then the top was uneven, and vice versa. Nevertheless, I think the combination of being very close-up and at an angle from below, plus the gradations of colour on the bottom “rungs,” makes for kind of an interesting image. I just wish I could control the focus a bit better–the upper rungs are not as much in focus as I’d like. That’s what I get for using a phone camera that I don’t know how to control very well (perhaps there is a way to make the focus more even on it, but I don’t know how).

I also took a series of photos of a different object, also at an unusual angle, the best one of which is this, I think:

RepeatingPatternCan-YouShowDaily-Jan2015

This image is taken from inside a can. The can has plastic wrap covering the other end (a long story–it’s a way to see under the water in a pond to look at tadpoles and such…it’s my son’s tool!). I like the way the shadows work in this one, and the indentations on the end with the plastic wrap. I tried to use the “rule of three” when taking this image, but every time I got the light into one of the intersecting lines for the rule of three, the rest of the image didn’t work as well. It was hard getting the angle of the can to work with the range of the camera so that the image still stayed “inside” the can. So I broke that rule and went for a centered image.

I didn’t do any editing of these photos afterwards; I was just trying to see what I could do with the camera and the light and the colours as is. That was kind of a challenge in itself, as once I learned how to use some image editing software, I’ve kind of gotten addicted to it.

This was a really fun daily–I like how these image assignments get one to look at the world in an entirely new way. You really pay attention to small things like how light and shadow work on things that you might otherwise just ignore in your daily life. I’ve done a couple of “Photo safari’s” before (one of the activities suggested for week 2 of the YouShow), and have really enjoyed them for that same reason as well. Here are a couple of links to the ones I’ve done in the past: Sept. 2013, and April 2014. I may try to do another one for the You Show, because I really enjoy doing them!