This week, I’m adding a new blog circle to the mix. Called On Our Plates, it is a monthly circle for food photography. I really enjoy good food photography, but I’ve never been very happy with my own attempts. The theme for this blog circle is fairly loose and open to interpretation, the only requirement is that each post be somehow food related.

I am starting out with a fairly simple shot I did of some pasta. I love food shots with rustic backgrounds, and I thought this tri-color pasta that we were about to have for dinner would look nice against a weathered wood background. Since it has “vegetables” in it, I tell myself that it is healthier than plain old spaghetti, and since my kids will actually eat it without the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanies most of our non-pizza dinners, it has a place in our regular rotation.

Hopefully, as my food photography improves, I will be able to build up to sharing recipes. Check back on the first Wednesday of each month to see what we’ve come up with! The next stop on this month’s circle is Karen Evonne’s Chicken Avocado Lime Soup. Go check it out and leave her some love! Thanks so much for stopping by.

{Canon 5D MarkII, Canon 24-70 2.8L @ 60 mm, ss 1/100 @ f3.2,
ISO 6400—I shot these on a gloomy afternoon, thus the graininess.}

This week’s  theme for the Clickin Moms P52 was Inspired By. The idea was to find another artist or particular piece of art that we loved, and to use that as inspiration for our own work. We didn’t have to replicate another piece, just use some aspect of it as inspiration—color, lighting, mood, theme. My plan was to sit down and go through some online art galleries to choose an artist or a painting for this week’s project, but it has been one of those weeks. Between cleaning house for Super Bowl Sunday, cooking snacks for Super Bowl Sunday, having company over on Super Bowl Sunday, my husband’s birthday, school, and a trip to the Imaging USA expo in Nashville on Monday (so much fun) I completely ran out of time for art research. So . . . I decided to go with something else that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time.

I have been in awe of Melissa Gibson’s Toy Project for a very long time. I love her use of light, and I love the way her toys looks alive, as if they are about to stroll out of the frame at any moment. I’ve also followed a few other photographers who use Lego minifigures in different scenes, some of which are unbelievably creative. My mom brought us my old Clue game to play with the kids at Christmas, so I convinced my son to dig through his billions of Legos and find his detective so I could set up this shot. I wanted it to have a noir kind of lighting, very harsh light and deep shadows. I had been fiddling with it for several minutes, taking lots of shots, but couldn’t quite get the look I was after. Then, just as I was about to take another shot, my son walked over and held his Harry Potter wand with the light-up tip over the detective’s head. “Look, a chandelier,” he said, then started to wander off. “No, wait! Don’t move!” I told him. The wand gave me just the look I was going for. I added a little grain and a vintage wash to add to the noir effect.

Follow the blog circle to see more interpretations of this week’s theme. Next up is Kristy Wolfe.

{Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 24-70 2.8L, lit with an LED  flashlight to
camera left,  and a Harry Potter wand above the Lego detective’s head.}

It’s Wednesday! Time for another installment of the 2015 P52. This week’s theme was Sign of the Times. We were supposed to photograph something whose days are numbered, so to speak. Something that, 10-20 years from now, we expect to be obsolete or vanished.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I’ve seen a few things fall by the wayside. Remember when music stores were full of vinyl albums and cassette tapes? I do. I remember the days of one phone for the whole household, attached to the wall, with a rotary dial that tick-tick-ticked its way back to start after each number. I remember three channels on the television, and my dad walking over to thump its top when the picture would start to roll. I also remember the billboards along the highway informing (or warning?) us that The information superhighway is coming! The what? Oh, the times they are a-changin’. Always.

I thought about this theme all week. Printed books, newspapers, CDs, checkbooks . . . several things came to mind, but nothing struck a creative spark. Not until I was straightening the kitchen on Monday and saw a light bulb sitting on the counter where my husband had left it and never put it away. I immediately had the idea for this image.

Incandescent bulbs are slowly being edged out by the more environmentally-friendly LEDs, but I still love the warm glow of incandescent bulbs best, and I will miss them if they do become obsolete.

My daughter, as usual, was willing to help me out with a photo project, and she was pretty excited to see the end product. How did you do that?!? Even her brother was pretty impressed. We tried to convince him that she is magic, that all she did was hold out the bulb and say Lumos! but he wasn’t buying it. I was just excited that the end product looked exactly as I had it pictured.

Next on the blog circle is Kristy Wolfe. Thanks for stopping by!

(This is a composite of 2 images, both shot with
the Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 24-70 2.8L)

So you know how most people have a favorite song, a favorite movie, a favorite book, a favorite restaurant? Not me. I am fickle and changeable and moody, and my favorite things change with the wind. It’s not a new thing. I remember being stumped by the favorites sections in those All About Me books that I used to get when I was a kid, or in the My Senior Year book that I got with my graduation invitations. At first, I tried to fill them out, but found myself going back a few weeks later to scribble out and change answers, so eventually I gave up and left them blank. And those internet security questions? Where you have to commit to a favorite . . . something, and remember it months or years later when you’ve forgotten your password? Forget it. I need something concrete. Unchangeable. The place of my birth. My mother’s maiden name. You get the idea.

So imagine my thought process when I found out that this week’s P52 prompt was Your Favorite. Once again, I was stumped. After a lot of thought (and scrapped ideas) I went with this . . .

My favorite morning ritual. Usually. Sometimes I’m feeling British, or reading Pride and Prejudice, or watching Sherlock, and then it’s tea. But most of the time, first thing in the morning, it’s the thought of coffee that drags me from my warm nest of blankets to deal with my bright-and-early morning-people children. God does love a practical joke, apparently.

One of my photography goals for this year, and for this P52, is to stretch out into types of photography that I don’t practice often, like still life and macro. Those were some of my favorite types of photography when I first got into it, oh, 20 years or so ago. When I became a mom, my focus changed to photographing babies and children, and as much as I enjoy that, I also find myself wanting to grow in other areas of photography.

My other photography goal for this year is  to find my “style.” Much like my inability to settle on a favorite movie, I’ve also had a hard time settling into a style of photography and post-processing that is recognizably me. I could easily pick out the work of my favorite photographers from amongst the masses, and I know that right now that isn’t true of my work. I’m hoping that by shooting consistently within this P52, some common thread will emerge. I can’t wait to see all of my P52 shots all in one place at the end of the year.

Oh, and for the record, this is my favorite shot from this year’s P52. So far. But check back with me next week . . .

Thanks for stopping by! The next photographer in this week’s Clickin Moms P52 blog circle is Karen Buchanan. Go check out her interpretation of this week’s theme.

{For my photographer friends, this was shot with the Canon 5D MarkII,
Canon 24-70 2.8L (first version) @ 64 mm, ss 1/100 @ f4, ISO 1600.}