Practising with the Camera

Because I've only taken up blogging very recently I'm taking a lot of photographs around the house to practise with the camera...
Partly to provide shots for the blog, and partly because I want my photos to be better... better than just the kind of holiday and family snap shots one normally takes... I've even been reading the manual.. wonders will never cease.

I'm having the most trouble with art !!
Mostly because the lights and assorted other things including ME reflect off the glass.
I'll keep trying and hopefully you'll see an improvement....

Now this was a pretty good shot I thought.. but I wasn't so keen on the background.. which is my sofa.

So I put the picture onto a different background, and I prefer the way it looks against the grey/blue... BUT... you can quite clearly see the reflection of my hand in the glass. So more practising required.

I made the piece from a 95 cent frame I bought at a charity shop. It was a nasty brown colour, and I don't think its even wood.. rather some heavy duty moulded cardboard with a shiny coating.
Anyway.. I painted it with some leftovers from a tester pot of Martha Stewart's Sugar White... it took a few coats but it came out just fine.
The green backing is a piece of brushed velvet which I got from a store in town which was throwing out its discontinued fabric swatches.
That by the way is an excellent way to get hold of assorted [albeit small] pieces of good quality upholstery fabric for projects such as this... and all the better for being FREE !!!
Just go in and ask what they do with their old samples, and they'll probably put them aside for you.
The image is a postcard from home.. of the Lake District actually, and the white edge is just a conveniently sized envelope. So the postcard sits on the envelope which sits on the fabric and its all held in place by the glass.


This is one of those plain pine IKEA frames [this time 50 cents from the Salvation army].
It's the same Sugar White paint., the image of the flowers is a tiny greetings card.. but this time the blue surround IS actually a proper cardboard mount..

I get them for pennies at the local dollar store.. less than a third of what they'd be at a proper ART shop.
Trouble is they're usually horrible colours.. like pesch or plum... ugh !!
White or cream ones are hard to find, since they are the most popular the dollar store just doesn't get them.
So I just paint them too.. that way you can have any damn colour you like. Card mount is usually made of a good quality cardstock that will happily stand up to a couple of coats of paint.. and there you have it.

I know its not a great photo though.. there's the shadow of my hand again.. I'm thinking its to do with the direction of the light..
Oh well back to the drawing board.