Birthdays

Tickets

My son had his 9th birthday this past weekend. For his dinner he picked a popular children's place with games and other kid's stuff. While he was playing I was a bit bored since I had forgotten to take something to read. However, I did have my camera and flash with me and decided to play around with whatever I could find. I didn't even need to leave the table. There were a couple of pieces of pizza remaining, plus my son would periodically drop off his tickets when they got to be too much for him to carry around. More after the jump.

The shot above is some of those tickets that I arranged on the table after he had dropped off another batch of them. I used my flash unit, but held it off to the side with the idea of "raking" the light across the top of the tickets. The thought I had at the time was that it should give me some interesting play between highlights and deep shadows. I think it worked out for the most part. I exaggerated the colored type and graphics in post processing to break-up the gray tones of the tickets themselves.

Just remember next time you find yourself a bit bored somewhere. So long as you have a camera, there will always be something to photograph. Even if it doesn't result in a work of art, it will give you some good practice with the camera and at jump starting your creativity. For example, the shot above gave me some practice arranging objects for composition as well as practice using an off-camera flash. Plus, it is just fun to try something off the wall sometimes.

Keep shooting.