Project complete

Well, I played around with my camera and that damn cherry all afternoon, but I gotta tell ya, I got some really cool pix from the sessions. Check them out here. I think it was an excellent exercise for me, and I definitely think photography teachers should have their students do something similar. It forced me to really use my camera, figure out what different settings do, sample what effects I can achieve with those settings, and learn how to use light, composition, and color to really enhance a photo.

The funny thing is, I was carefully trying to set up the cherry in different poses and locations and take the pictures, but our dogs and cats kept trying to get at the cherry. So I have random pictures of a paw and a cherry, a mouth and a cherry, a nose and a cherry, and so on. If you look carefully you'll see that all of our pets—Max, Dollie, Spanky, Adora, Scrappy, and Kayo—are in at least one cherry photo, even the fish.

Anyhow, I had great fun doing this and I hope you like them as much as I do. I totally got into the creativity of it all and lost track of time, but I also learned a lot about how to use my camera in the process. In the past I've always had my camera set on Auto or something similar, and rarely took any artistic control of the camera. But now I frequently fiddle with the white balance, ISO, metering, and so on. I figure this is a wonderful way to hone my skills before we head to Hawaii in a few weeks. Click!

A Cherry in Abstract

Okay, this is just another example of how weird I truly am. My coworker Janice just gave me some cherries, and she happened to give me five. As anyone who knows me really well can tell you, I have a dash of OCD in my soul, and therefore I have to eat things like M&Ms, chips, peanuts, and grapes in multiples of two: 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. So when Janice gave me five cherries, well, that threw everything off for me. What is one to do in such a situation? I certainly didn't want to be greedy and ask her for another, and honestly, she would think I am nuts if I had told her why I wanted just one more.

So there I was, staring at that fifth cherry sitting on my desk, looking rather pretty with its swirls of red, orange, and yellow, and I had a sudden idea. What if I photograph that single cherry all day today, whenever and wherever I want, as a kind of study of a still life? So I started experimenting with focus, light, and composition, and I really began getting into it.

I'm going to try to get really creative with it once I get home from work because it's kinda hard to sneak in pictures at my desk. Plus I'd like to do some outdoor shots if possible. I'll post the results of my project tomorrow so you can see what I came up with. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the cherry will stay firm and ripe until I'm done with it, since it's so damn hot out today, although a time lapse record of its decomposition might be interesting.