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I’m still coming to terms with my new camera, so excuse me for not discussing it in great detail just yet.

In the meantime, I spent a little time on Saturday playing with some flashes and a more conventional white background.

Earlier in the year, after another round of painful set-up with improvised boxes and pieces of card and cloth, I decided to buy a simple background stand. I choose this PhotoSel stand since it was cheap and I had the Amazon vouchers. I’m not convinced of the quality of it – a few pieces are very tight when put together and hard to disassemble, but as a little home background set it does the job.

Working alongside a couple of flashguns, it’s possible to light most objects, although I still sturggle to get the background as bright as I’d want. Still it’s fun to learn.

September introduces a new season of photography clubs for me. It’s a good thing too as I’d fallen away from my camera over the past few months, not by choice but by circumstance.

Interestingly this year, the program for my local club (CPA) has a lot more focus on taking and working with photographs. I’d been hopeful this would invigorate me and teach me some new tricks and even after week 2 I can see I’m going to be pretty happy this year.

Last night we set up a series of still life objects using different light types. The idea being to show that you could do a lot with simple lighting and you don’t need expensive  equipment. This picture was taken using a 40watt desk lamp and a gold reflector.

This final image was converted to monochrome, but the original was good and a little compensation for the colour balance of the bulb made for a great result too.

What was especially interesting for me was the introduction to the subject delivered by one of the club members. Brian has won a lot of awards including achieving some great accreditation with the Royal Photographic Society for his still life work and some of the tips and suggestions he gave made for an excellent learning experience.