Photos

In my first post, I somewhat focused on sharing creativity rather than mile-long essays about everything wrong in the world. Honestly, I totally forgot about why I started this blog. I wanted to share my stories, opinions and artworks. From what I have done thus far, I believe that I only shared my stories and opinions, but I never really got to focus on creativity. Therefore, I decided to change that with this post. I believe that this will be part of a multiple photo thread since I have lots of pictures I want to share.

This was somehow the start of my photography journey. It seems funny to me how something as trivial as a toy car can turn into a new hobby, an obsession even. Now I am somewhat obsessed with getting the perfect shot each time but at the same time, I am learning about trail and error. Perfection is rarely achieved on the first try.

The backstory to this photo is actually quite simple. I wanted to sell some toys on eBay. That´s it. Well not quite. The pictures I had at my disposal are just, for lack of better words, horrible. Therefore I decided to take pictures myself since I had time to spare and longed for something different. This Hot Wheels Honda Civic 2001 Boulevard was not the first photo I took since again it took lots of trial and error to achieve that picture. Honestly, after all this time I am still not that proud of that picture since the lighting and the editing is off and the backdrop is just pixelated. The surface area is also uneven, but I have learnt to get along with these minor imperfections. This car was sold mere days after it was put up for sale which encouraged me to take more photos. Some buyers even added that they liked buying those toy cars due to the pictures. Which somehow made me feel a sense of pride. I am just glad that the effort paid off since it did take many attempts to get that picture just right, even though it is still not perfect. It still surprises me that a single rather good picture can change someone´s opinion.

This photo is shot using my iPhone 6s Plus which just proves to show that everyone can take pictures if they wanted to. It may not be as good as the pictures one can see on social media all day every day but everyone needs to start somewhere.

 

After spending lots of time taking pictures of toy cars, I have decided to get myself a camera. Not the professional expensive ones, but one that is capable of the basic photography functions. I got the Canon PowerShot Sx540 Hs. It is not the best camera available, but it was slightly better than my phone. Therefore, it had to do. It is somewhat a graduation present from myself to myself, since normally I am not that impulsive and always need a reason to buy something. After getting the camera, I just took photos of random objects in my room testing the different functions and settings. It was fun but I deleted most of the photos since they were all a bit shaky. This picture is amongst the few photos that I liked. I moved from toy cars to toys in general (a proper full circle situation). This is just a collectable Rody horse. I just liked the filter I used at that time. I mean there are some aspects that I would like to change about that picture but this is one of the few pictures I did not have to edit at all. Now thinking about it, I probably should have edited that picture to make it less blurry and all that. Either way, that picture turned out better than expected since I was not expecting to get proper pictures in the first place.

 

This is just another stuffed animal I had in my room on a light source. I just thought the lighting looked okay and the mouse looked funny like that. This is one of the few pictures I did not delete after the first few thousand attempts. After taking that picture, I also realized that I need to clean my room. The dust on the glass just really stood out after taking that picture. This photo also was an unexpected picture. I know I deliberately took that picture, but I just was not expecting it to turn out this way. A part of me liked that picture that much so that I wanted to recreate it. However, I did not manage to recreate it or take a picture close to this one since something was just different. After taking a few more photos of toys I have moved on to different things since just toys was a bit monotone for me and I just wanted to try out different medium before settling on a main medium.

 

It was a rainy day where I could not concentrate. The sky was dark and depressing. The ground and everything else was wet from all that rain. I never would have thought that dark days also have a silver lining. On that day I was just sitting at my desk looking out the window. The rain made me feel a bit depressed and all that but then I took out the camera. With the zoom function, I wanted to see how things are outside. I mean with the zoom function one can see tons of interesting details that we miss every day. It was just interesting for me to see how small details like raindrops on the leaves can look so beautiful. Again it took a lot of trial and error to get those pictures and the pictures are in no way perfect. However, I do like those pictures and this is somewhat a nice reminder that we should stop and smell the roses or in this case admire the raindrop from time to time. It still shocks me today that those pictures turned out that nice since I taking those pictures from the first floor (or second floor if I spoke American English) of the house. Those trees were on the ground floor. It is quite a distance. At that exact moment, I thought “Maybe the camera is not as bad as I thought.”

This is another picture I took from the window of my room. The sun was shining bright and the bell tower just looked so fine. The clouds in the sky created a lovely pattern which somehow emphasized the bell tower even more. I have to point out that I needed to edit this photo excessively since the sky is normally not that blue. At least the camera could not capture that vibrant colour. A thing I am ashamed about is the fact that I did not open the window to take that photo. There are specks of dust particles all over the place which could have been easily avoided if I had just opened the window.

On this day I was just playing around with a syringe and ink which could have turned into a gigantic mess but surprisingly it didn´t. I did not intend to create something that looks presentable since again I was just fooling around. However, the ink patterns turned out quite nice therefore I decided to take a photo which also turned out just fine. This is one of the many photos I took that day. What I am actually most surprised about is the fact that the ink did not soak through the paper instantly. The paper actually showed a hydrophobic quality which shocked me. Maybe it had something to do with the ink or the syringe. Either way, I just liked how it looks and how three dimensional the water ink droplets turned out in this picture.

I am going, to be honest here. I am not trying to advertise anything with this picture and honestly, I have no idea why I took that picture in the firstplace. I guess I just liked the toy-like effect of the picture. With this whisky bottle, I also tested out how different angles change the perspective of the item. From the top, the bottle would have looked tiny and not so intimidating, but from the bottom, the opposite effect is achieved in my opinion. I am not going to say I am proud or even like this picture, but it taught me a lot and I just couldn’t get myself to delete this picture.

After a long time focusing on landscape photography, I turned back to toy photography where it all started. It felt somewhat meditative to take pictures of my childhood toys. It just brought back so many memories and just felt good to use the toys again. This picture looks somewhat depressing, I know, but that is what I was trying to achieve. The bear just looks so sad here. The vintage corners just made it look even more depressing and intimidating at the same time. The bear was a farewell present from my old school. Therefore what the bear represents was an ending that was devastating for me. I just thought that this picture represents perfectly what the bear means to me and I would not want to change a thing. However, the ending also meant a beginning at a new school where I got to meet tons of new people and see exciting places. Therefore, my interpretation of this picture would be that the darkness and depressing theme of this picture represents the ending of a significant life event, but the cuddly teddy bear which looks so sad represents me in what I believe was a dark time. If I truly wanted to make this picture depressing I would have made it black and white, but I didn´t. The colour in this picture represents hope and an interesting and unknown future that I am headed into. Therefore, taking pictures of my childhood toys were so meditative. With the pictures, I could tell a story nobody knows about. I could express how important or relevant a toy was to me as a child even as an adult. It also showed me that with the story I could also see the bright side of every situation. Every depressing picture has a silver lining.

 

This last picture was also an unintended surprise. I was in my dorm room when I just looked out the window. With the camera, I could see all the details I missed the first time around. And somehow this photo just happened. It is an unintended wonder, I guess. There are some parts of this photo that I would like to change like the rather odd colour scheme that just occurred or how the focus is a bit off at the edge. Nevertheless, I just liked how the stones looked like a waterfall pouring down between the gaps. I did find the leaves slightly distracting from the main focal point, but that is just what happens in nature. There was nothing I could do, but I did not want to change it anyways. 

 

All my pictures are available for download. Just follow the link below:

https://pixabay.com/users/aureliajh-18994837/

More pictures will come soon.