If seahorses were flowers . . .

The past few weeks our "Lucifer" crocosmia have been in full bloom. The flowers die away from the middle of the stalk out to the tip, so what you're seeing here is the last of the flowers on these stalks. I liked the way they curved and bent, so I placed them just so and shot. To me they look like botanical seahorses!

This is one of the lessons/assignments in my upcoming "Developing Your Creative Edge" online photo class. The lessons are fun, easy (yet challenging), and you don't need flash. The class begins Friday, September 27, 2013, and lasts for six weeks. Each week I post a lesson and you have two+ weeks to get it done and submit it for comments and critiques. Registration fee: $85. Questions? E-mail me at carol at carolleigh dot net.

More things on white . . .

A fan of black coral on white, and then two photos of lavender stalks on white. We're having fun with this assignment! ©Carol Leigh

On white . . .

Over in my alumni group, we're working on photographing anything against a white background. These are some images I made using (first) a wheat stalk and (second) a couple of pine cones. I like the clean, spare, Zen-like feel to this effect, don't you?

One way to do this would be to place the subject directly upon a piece of white paper, but in this case I stuck the wheat stalk and the pine cone branch into a jar and set the jar in front of a white backdrop. Light came from both left and right, and I reflected a bit of gold onto the wheat to give it some oomph.

Shooting straight down onto something poses other problems, such as how to light the subject so that you don't have harsh shadows and so that you don't block any light you may have coming down from above. Stay tuned!

©Carol Leigh

Snow White

In light of the snow that's hit our country recently — and is about to do so again — I've been photographing a bottle (thank you, Jan H.!) and purposely overexposing it to make it as light and bright as possible. It's a spare, minimalistic look, and it helps clear my head of the madness swirling around me these days. ©Carol Leigh