That shot was taken at home in the lounge, a black umbrella formed the background, a clamp held the knife, and the camera was on a tripod. I played with the position of the knife until the light (daylight) caught it just right.
The most recent work on the assignment was Curved. I decided to use the tracks left by car head/tail lights on a long exposure. Last evening I stood on a bridge over the A41 near Berkhamsted and waited for the light to fade. ISO 50, f/22 and 1 sec - that didn't yield the results I wanted, so wait some more.
Whilst standing there, getting cold hands, along passed several police motorcycles with their blue lights flashing, their riders looked up at me :-(, thirty seconds later was another bike, and several unmarked cars escorted by a couple of regular police cars.
After reading several articles in recent months about photographers being treated harshly by the police, I was a little concerned that I might get a visit on the bridge.
Excuse the quality of the photo, I was trying for long exposures and didn't have the change to change the ISO (I was on 50) and exposure to the point where I might have gotten something sharper.
Anyway, I didn't get a visit by the police and I'm still none the wiser regarding who was being escorted.
I got a couple of nice shots out of the evenings work, this is "Curved" for my assignment:
And this is just the coloured sky through some trees - a pleasing silhouette.
Back to the projects, I've not really made a stab at project 8. The notes suggest going into the streets and taking 20-30 pictures showing how you approach and shoot a subject. You are to keep the camera to your eye whilst looking and developing the best shot, taking pictures as you proceed. Now, I'm a pretty introverted person, and getting out on the local high street with a camera clamped to my eye and taking pictures which include lots of people (who I've not asked permission from) does fill me with a certain amount of dread. I might do this at the local zoo, where people are expecting cameras.
