autofantasia's photos with the keyword: ornament

As regular visitors to my photostream will know, I struggled greatly with last week's Sunday Challenge , which had the theme of high key . Thankfully, I found this week's challenge of low key much less stressful. And whereas last week I introduced you all to Gerald The Dinosaur, this week it's the turn of Harry The Owl who is one of three metal owls that make up an ornamental sculpture to be found in our back garden. He's the furthest to the right of the trio - hence him being called Harry ... the other two then are, as you may have guessed, called Tom and Dick. I took the shot outside after 10.00pm last night once it had got dark - heaven knows what the neighbours would have thought if they saw me. I had the camera on a tripod and for a change worked with manual settings throughout ... even the focus! As for the key light that was a small pocket torch that I had positioned to my right hand side behind a small board of MDF so as to stop any light spilling onto the foliage behind where I'd positioned Harry. Best of all as far as I'm concerned is that I've posted this pretty much as it came out of the camera. The only 'work' done on it was a slight crop and I 'dodged' the white in his eyes just a smidgen as I felt they were a little flat. So, there you go, not quite SOOC, but pretty damned close!

A similar shot to the one I submitted for the recent Sunday Challenge , which had the theme of Christmas . This one processed to reflect the 'other side' of Christmas. With 1 in 4 people in the UK expected tp experience a mental health problem each year and loneliness on the increase (especially in the over Seventies) it would seem that not everyone will have the type of Christmas they might have wished for. Not so much merry or even white, but rather more lonely and blue. My thoughts then go out to those people for whom this Christmas may not be the happiest. Hopefully, 2015 will see them experience better times.

This little fellow is the latest addition to our collection of Christmas decorations and ornaments ... or expensive, outsourced, dust collecting toot as I heard someone call such items recently! Taken for The Sunday Challenge theme of show us your Christmas .

Yet another bear selectively lit with a previous Sunday Challenge in mind. This little ceramic bear is actually designed to take potpourri, not that it ever gets used for that. Now, what with the bears, the ice cubes and the Elvis buckle I really need to get outside into the fresh air ... I'm starting to look a little pale!

Yet another challenging, no pun intended, week as far as The Sunday Challenge was concerned. The theme this week was selective lighting, meaning as I understood it a situation where the photographer controls the light. So I came up with a few ideas, one of which resulted in me spilling a tray full of Coca-Cola over my workstation. I hasten to add that was not part of the plan and no photographs were taken! Anyway, of the three themes I came up with, I've decided to use this little lady here for the main challenge entry. We've had her for many years and she’s stating to show her age with a couple of pieces from her derrière missing completely, but from the front sat on our kitchen window sill I think she’s still rather cute. I took this shot with my macro lens, which I have something of a love hate relationship with and with manual focus … a thing I rarely do with any great success. To give you an idea of scale the little bear is just over 5cm tall: 2 inches in old money. I had it sat on my desk with a piece of black card serving as an infinity curve. It was late at night so the room was in total darkness. Lighting was provided from the left with a small Maglite torch and from the right via an even smaller Cyba-lite, which I had shining down a piece of cardboard tubing in the guise of a home-made snoot. That’s the joy of TSC , it pushes you to try new things: to tackle new subjects and to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. I mean, this time last week I didn't even know what a snoot was - lol.

Another Chevy hood ornament, this time on the wedding car from earlier.