Time for another update on this challenge.
At this point, the challenge has become a real challenge: it has become increasingly difficult to make time and find motivation to go out and shoot. Our move was coming closer and closer, and the logistical mess around that was not making things easy. Also the fact that, with Covid19, we still didn't get out much. At all.
Week 13 : wabi sabi
Let's start by explaining what exactly wabi sabi means: wabi-sabi is a Japanese philosophy concept centered on the acceptance of transience and appreciation of beauty in imperfection.
This subject was easy for me. For some reason, I immediately thought of my daughter's smile. She's a teenager so sulky behavior is a must, and she's starting to suffer from the lack of contact with peers (she is doing virtual school since March 2020). So every smile from her is a joy in so many ways.
Unfortunately, and despite excellent dental hygiene, she has very bad teeth. They are discolored and crooked, adult teeth growing where the baby teeth are still in place, messing with the enamel on the adult teeth. She is actually looking forward to her braces 😳
Anyway, it's a beautifully imperfect smile.
Week 14 : calm
The next challenge was "calm". I associate this with sitting in the barn, late at night, listening to the horses munching their hay.
Unfortunately, that is not possible anymore. So after thinking for a long time, searched for something that came close to that same feeling, I came up with the following image.
This is an old barn that we had on the property we lived on, pending our move. It was the parcel adjacent to the horse farm we sold. Before we knew that we would have to move to Switzerland, we were talking about fixing up this barn and make it a walk-in shelter for our horses.
I just love the inside of it, it has so much character. I hope the new owners of this house finish our plans and come here at night to listen to the munching.
Week 15 : common object
I must admit that I took this photo for another challenge, where the subject was "blur". But I figured it qualifies for "common objects" as well.
My studio lighting was in storage at the time of taking this image. I took this one in our tiny, very dark bathroom (no windows) and used my iPhone's flashlight.
Week 16 : product photography
When we still had our farm, the basement of the house was my husband's winery. He makes his own wine, from juice. He had a really nice setup with an entire laboratory, barrels, ... .
When we did a virtual walkthrough of our house in Switzerland, we discovered there is a huge basement. Part of it will be for my business (it has a separate entrance), the other part will once again be his winery. He is super happy and excited about this, obviously. We haven't looked into the law around selling your own wine, that's the next step.
This assignment was pretty hard for me. Product photography is not my forte. On top of that, most of our stuff was in storage. I would have preferred a stemmed wineglass for this but ... 📦🤷🏻♀️. Also, I needed natural light for this, because the artificial light at my disposal was not the right light. So I put up the scene in front of a north-faced window. I don't like that that reflection is visible, but again, no material to diffuse the light with. Taking all that into account, I think it still turned out ok.
This is something that I will keep on practicing though, as soon as I have my studio set up.
Week 17 : reflection
This was definitely a streak keeper. Things were starting to accelerate at the time. The first week of May, the movers were coming to pick up our stuff to ship overseas. Including my computer. Withdrawal would sure popup 😄. So I thought I'd make a reflection-selfie while editing some images in LR.
It's an image that needs an explanation, which makes it kind of weird. So definitely not my best work. But hey, I did not want to loose my streak!
Week 18 : symmetry
I felt my heart squeeze every time I thought about having to leave our little slice of heaven. So I decided to take a walk through our woods again. Mosquito control was spraying that day. And our property butts up against a right of way with electricity towers.
I stood there for at least an hour, waiting for them when they were going back and forth, trying to get the perfectly timed shot.
I'm pretty sure, I'm mosquito resistant now 😲😷.
Colors were a bit too bright for my liking (it was midday) so I decided to go black and white.
That's it for this update! See you in a few weeks!