Ego Boost

A week or so ago, in a bid to beef up my picture count for one of my classes, I spent a Friday night with a tripod, camera, a couple flashes, black sheets, and a few household items. A pewter shot glass, some tarnished silver wine cups, some wooden puzzles, and a crystal brandy snifter full of pomegranate seeds were my subjects.

I lit these items individually from various angles, watching how the shadows fell, or how the light was dispersed across their various surfaces. The most interesting, to me, were the seeds. Translucent, the light affected their look dramatically. The crystal glass they were in refracted and reflected the light.

And then, just before I put them away (in my belly), I decided to visit my old friend, HDR. The only HDR shot of the shoot, I took 9 exposures and blended them together.



I showed the picture to a few friends, who loved it. It's the only shot I've put up on my Flickr stream since the Toronto Zombie Walk. I opted to add it to the Boing Boing Flickr pool, where it was marked as a favourite by Xeni.

Then, on Friday, a week after I'd taken it, it ended up on the front page of Boing Boing where it still sits. This has naturally pushed it to surpass my Vegas sunrise pic from last year as my most viewed, with the number still rising. After a long week, it was a huge ego boost, and something I kept mentally returning to as I worked through over 1000 pictures this weekend for submission to one of my classes. Sometimes I even think I might be getting the hang of this photography thing.