Glass

Dog Blog Post #337:The Daily Shoot read...

Make a photograph of something made of glass today.

... and I said, "Really?" (Son's favored expression of incredulity.)

In case you are perplexed by my reaction, I should point out that large, boisterous, young mammals and glass don't really go well together.

Ever.

Period.

But the shot must be captured! With 123 shots tweeted, I was going to let a little thing like fear of broken glass derail me now.

At first I tried the cheaters way out. I took various glass objects, held them out in front of the point-n-shoot and snapped a picture with a dog behind. I won't bore you with those shots, as you've seen various flavors in the past.

Next!

Then I grabbed Baby and tried again...

(Obvious Observation of the Day #1: Longer lenses require longer arms if you intend to be holding both object and camera. Beefy biceps are a definite plus, as well.)

... creating a much clearer, much richer, and just as boring as shot as I had with the point-n-shoot. (sigh) Ok... this would never do.

So I tossed Henry a few cookies and put up the gate to keep him out of the kitchen, washed off a lovely glass christmas tree shaped bowl I got for Christmas this year (if nothing else, the Daily Shoot is causing me to slowly dust my way through the various knick-knacks that clutter my shelves), put Zachary in down-stay, put cookies in the bowl, dropped down on my belly on the floor with Baby, and started banging off close up shots.

Wow... were they coming out with a serious orange cast. True, I was in the kitchen, it was later in the day (dogs were gone most the day), and I was shooting under incandescent lights but...

Wow... were they coming out with a serious orange cast.

So what did I do? Well, for the first 20 or so pictures, I did nothing. (Yeah, aren't I the clever one?) At last, after scanning over the shots again, and noting Zachary was the color of a halloween pumpkin.

(lower resolution example - straight out of the camera!)

... I decided to try to fiddle with the White Balance.

And that's when I was hit with Obvious Observation of the Day #2: Always check what mode you are in before you start taking pictures.

On the plus side, I now know that shooting pictures indoors under incandescent lighting with the camera in "Sunset Mode" will create some really orange pictures, should I ever need them.

Hey, it's happened before!

The funny part is, after finishing with a few "good" shots, and uploading the computer, I find I was rather taken by the orange-cast close-ups. Go figure.

And finally, another scavenger challenge shot ("bristles") This is the neighbor's conifer, planted 2' from the property line, that (not surprisingly) overhangs our property by a rather hefty amount and thus affords and excellent opportunity for a close up.

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