Envelopes and Low light Self

 Red Envelopes 

1/31 Photograph a Horse 

Year of the horse / 4712 / Red Envelopes

I know, what is the connection between horses and red envelopes? Yesterday was the Chinese New Year and it is now the year of the horse. During the Chinese celebration, elders give young relatives red envelopes filled with money for good luck. Yesterday there were no horses to be found in my area, thus, red envelopes artfully set up on the dining room table with a glass tree of life ornament for color ended up being my subject. While taking the pictures, I practiced lighting and focusing on different parts of the envelopes. I could have just used this picture from last May, but my goal is take a picture a day for the 365 days. It's still early to use an old picture and I will save that for days where I have no opportunity to photograph the prompt.

It wasn't like I had all the time in the world to work on this prompt since I had a lot to do to get ready for our weekend trip to my brother's for a ski weekend. (Ski for one, working on photography assignments for me) Yesterday, I made dough and then calzone, along with a salad for us to share here. Then I made "punishment cookies", new name for oatmeal butterscotch cookies given by my son S. As he put it, "What did I do wrong to have oatmeal in my cookies? Couldn't you just add chocolate chips?" With all that cooking, there was plenty of clean up involved while also doing some laundry. By the time we left, I was ready for a relaxing weekend!

On the ride up, I was driving since my husband was still technically working and needed to be on the phone. As I drove up, I kept my eyes open for more photo opportunities, but the sky was a very flat winter sky making everything look flat. After going through the Franconia Notch, I caught a glimpse of the sun setting finally adding some color to the landscape. Luckily this was just as the last phone call ended for my husband and we were right at a scenic lookout spot. I stopped and got a couple of shots, this was definitely a time that I was glad to be shooting in both Raw and JPEG. In editing, the Raw, I was able to make adjustments to add to the contrast and fix lighting.

After editing- skies lightened to what they actually looked like, horizon straightened.

Before editing- As dramatic as this looks, it wasn't what we saw.

This morning, my brother and husband are off skiing and I am enjoying the quiet time to work on my the daily prompt and take some pictures for my photoshop class.

Today's prompt required me to get creative without a tripod. I ended up using a tissue box, baking pan and a boxed video set to have my camera on the table while I sat by the window. (Do I look like my mother or what?)

 Self Portrait in Low light

2/1 Photograph in the Dark

Low Light / Lit by a Screen / Shadowy