Trying it again, different things to do...

On a cold winter's night.

First some steel wool

 

Add some crinkled foil behind it and a blue light.

Hmm, needs more color or something. Add some pink dried flowers!

So I added some reddish orange light to bounce off the foil in the background and left the blue light shining up from below.

Use a mister or a spray bottle to add water droplets.

It took a few adjustments to find something I liked and
I picked this one.

and this one....

a small change in the position of 

the colored lights and the steel

wool

changes everything.

I'm still working on perfecting something with the steel wool. I am making good use of it though as it is also handy at cleaning rust off from stuff!

👌

Now the ICM has me so intrigued so I thought I'd look up some more info on it. I ran across a guy named David Day who does ICM Still Life photography in a studio setting. That intrigued me because seriously the constant freaking cold days is wearing me down.

He uses pieces of plants, layers of tissue paper, paper, rocks, bark, and anything you can think of to shoot with ICM. Some of it is really out of this world, but you can really use your imagination and 'see' something.

Anyway he used some colored electric wire in one video. It made me curious so I searched the house for something like his wire to try my own ICM still life experiment.

I ended up going into my junk drawer and finding some different colored twist ties. I clipped them together and lit them from the side with a flash light. It was nothing like David's set up, but heck, I'm always up to see if I can do something similar.

So, these were two of my favorite ones from Thursday night. 

The writing on the one twist tie looks like stripes in the shots.

Do I know what I am doing? 

Nope.

But it sure is fun!

I liked this ICM better because it wasn't like doing  a landscape shot. I'm still working on the landscapes but thought I'd give this a whirl. 

So I took a lot of shots. Some I missed the subject completely. Some I were just awful. It takes a lot of practice and muscle memory to do this.  Moving the camera around a small object while the shutter is open isn't that easy.

But the results can be wild.

I also tried some of the dried pink flowers.

What I found is...

Less is more. 

So I just pulled the flowers apart until I had a little stem.

Another thing I noticed, is having more than one color is very helpful. There was a brown undyed flower in this little stem and I like how that color showed through.

Last. Dried tan flowers with a green stick and the clip with the orange end.

Happiness is experimentation.

Long ago I used to work with fractal programs, so abstraction is not something that is foreign to me. This is a bit more fun as I'm not dealing with formulas.

I guess I am just pretty cheap to entertain in the evenings. Junk drawer twist ties, pieces of flowers, flashlight, and a camera.

Works in progress.

Shooting macro and shooting feathers of all things!!!

In my mind I can hear the song 'It's a Small World after All' in the back of my mind.

I learned about doing reflective water droplets by watching another tutorial. I decided to try a pigeon feather and use that red piece of wrapping paper with snowflakes on it for this project.

I was pretty excited to see the snowflakes of the paper show up in the droplets. You should see the little happy dance I did! The process sounded much more difficult but really it wasn't. 

Table. Camera on Tripod. Xmas paper behind feather that I sprayed with a mister or a spray bottle. Set up a flashlight taped to a cup aimed at the paper.

Focus. Bingo. 

These were my very first tries and I was excited about them. I decided to try it again but with a Christmas card behind the feather. I found some nicer feathers and used the face mister to add the droplets. I used Playdoh to hold the feather upright on the table. 

I used a Christmas card to bounce light off from and then grabbed some of those multicolor curly cue ribbons in that I have and dropped them behind the feather. Apparently this can be done with a cell phone or any camera that you have.

I think I found a new love for creating abstracts and color in the small size.

What I started with. The colors in the background are curly ribbons reflecting light.

This is where the 'magic' happened. It looks pretty lame right???

Two shots I ended up with.

Ribbons behind the feather.

Christmas Card behind the feather.

Oh just smack me now. I can't wait to do more!

I always thought that photos like this needed fancy equipment and an art studio. Funny what can happen with a lot of experimentation and play.

A couple of more...

 

Really, it wasn't done in a studio or even in a special place. I shoved my Christmas Lego Village to the side and set this up on my work/display table with the living room brightly lit by the Christmas Chair and the lights behind the Village.

I am so enthralled by the abstract beauty that I found in my lens that I kept saying .... to no one...

OHHHHH AHHH

Look at that!

Oh MY word!

But if I don't reply or stop by your blogs this week it is because I have been summoned for Jury duty on a 4 day trial. If I am picked, I won't have access to the internet or my cell phone for most of the time.

I do not mind serving, I've done it before and found it quite interesting to do. If I am passed by, I'll see you all tomorrow!!!