Pictures Everywhere

Even in the most innocuous of places there is a world of pictures just waiting to be taken. This is why it is so important to take your camera (or one of them, at least) with you all the time – there’s undoubtedly a picture waiting for you around the next bend, in the next room, or waiting to pop out at you five minutes from now.

Case in point: my recent stay in a hotel. It was late at night – after 9pm, and I was bored watching the TV. So as I wandered around the room, I discovered a plethora of interesting angles and objects. Here’s just a few:

An interesting angle from the bedroom into the living area and the door of the suite.

 

The reflection of my bed (prior to having been slept in, obviously) in the bedroom television screen. I think it gives it a rather lo-mo effect, even before the post-processing was applied.

 

This is just a lamp. But aren’t the textures on it gorgeous?

 

These happen to be my shoes. Not sure why, but they looked an interesting target for my camera!

So, even though it was late and I was in an unfamiliar place – there were pictures to be taken. I could easily have missed these (and others) had I not had a camera with me, or an eye for trying things. I’m so glad I had both with me – my camera, and my eyes – and I’m ever-so-pleased with the results.

Here’s the moral of the story, I suppose: have your camera with you, and experiment. You never know what you’ll capture! Until next post, keep on writing with light!

P.S. The above happened to be a wonderful reason to have some fast glass on your camera. I have the wonderful Canon 50mm f/1.8 II lens which, aside from being cheap ($80), is also sharp and faster than any of my other glass (f/3.5 and f/4). While the room appeared bright to my eyes – it was nothing compared to sunlight – so most of the images above were taken at ISO 800 with exposure times between 1/40 and 1/80 second. If you don’t have fast glass, but have image stabilization, you should be able to achieve similar results.

P.P.S. One more footnote: this also happens to be a really good reason to have a dSLR or a compact with a large sensor size. ISO 800 returned eminently usable results, but on a smaller sensor, the images would be gritty, full of noise, and lacking in detail. Take the noise you do see in the images above and multiply it by a few times to get a good image of what they would look like on a small point-and-shoot with a small sensor. That’s not to say you can’t get great results with a small sensor, just that it takes more work to do – and you probably won’t be shooting at ISO 800, either.