Project 52: Week 20 - Small Things

Firstly can we just take a moment to reflect on the fact that we are rapidly approaching the halfway point of the year! Is anyone else as freaked out about this as I am? It seems like just a week or so ago that I was walking the dog around the garden at my in-laws’ house, listening to the sound of bagpipes playing and a Hogmanay reveller being violently ill!

Anyway, this week’s theme for the photo was Small Things. I knew straight off that I wanted to take a photo of something brightly coloured that I could up the saturation on to make it seem even brighter. What I would’ve loved to have photographed was what I always called the ‘button tin’. It was an old tin tea chest belonging to my great-grandmother and full of various sorts of buttons. I spent hours playing with the contents as a child and since it had been passed on to me I’d added buttons of my own to it; spare buttons from a cardigan my Nan knitted me, clipped off a favourite dress that had grown too small. Those things were currency, characters, tiddly-winks. I loved those buttons and they would’ve made a brilliant photo, I’m sure.

Unfortunately when I moved out of the family home and I asked for my stuff back, that wasn’t included amongst my treasures. It’s a shame that I’ll never get to see them again. I considered taking a photo of one of my other old playthings, a little money-box treasure chest filled with foreign and old money. This wouldn’t have worked so well for a couple of reasons; firstly it’s buried at the bottom of a box of stuff and I didn’t really have the energy to go routing around for it, and secondly, the money isn’t quite as brightly coloured as I would have liked.

Then I thought about using the little Lord of the Rings Warhammer figurines I used to collect and paint. I do intend to get them all out at some point (and actually finish painting them) but this one would’ve required a little bit more effort too. I would’ve had to take them out the box, unwrap them (because they’re each wrapped in tissue paper). Plus some of them aren’t quite as neat as others, so this one was mooted as well.

By this point I was starting to go with a ‘small things that make me happy theme’ and just photograph things like some knitting, chocolate and a book. But that seemed a bit too boring for me. And then I hit upon the perfect subject: pins!

Week 20: Small Things

It might not be the most interesting of photos but I think it ticks pretty much all the boxes. It’s nice and brightly coloured and looks kind of interesting. What I like about it most of all is that I took it on the windowsill in the spare bedroom (which is white) and from such an angle that you couldn’t see the window frame (or at least, you couldn’t once I’d cropped it) so it’s got a lovely pure white background. You’d never know that just to the left of the pile of pins there’s actually a small brown cuddly rat called Borage, hehe. The magic of photography.

I didn’t actually adjust the saturation as much as I thought I’d need to. The pins themselves were very bright and they didn’t need much doing to them to show that off. I tried a couple of macro shots but in those ones the yellow pin at the front wasn’t properly in focus and while I kind of liked the effect of that, I think this way worked better. I love that the ones in the middle and background are little more than brightly coloured blurs. I didn’t know that that was what I was going for until I saw it!

Next week's theme is the very interesting Walls. I'm hoping I'll find an interesting one that I can use for that otherwise it'll be a really boring photo.