Photo Challenge: Purple

The photo challenge this week was another color: purple. (Last time it was white.) Eleanor is a big fan of purple, so we have plenty of purple options around our house. But Keith, of course, is never satisfied with what's around the house. Usually, he's looking for an excuse to get out and go on a photo adventure.

Our adventure took us ... to my parents' house! Crocuses are just starting to bloom around here, and we've seen a lot of purple ones. So Keith took his camera when we went over on Sunday, hoping to get some good, Spring flower pictures. And it was a sunny day, but my parents live just one block from Lake Erie, which means their yard stays cold longer in the Spring, with the cold winds coming off the still-frozen lake. No such crocuses.

Instead, Keith took pictures of the purple flowers my mom had inside the house: living violets, and some cut flowers in a vase. The sunlight on the flowers was nice, but he also had a sneaking suspicion that flowers would be a very common picture for this week's challenge.

So on Tuesday night, as per usual, he was still prowling for that perfect picture. He had an idea for a very abstract picture, to ensure that the focus was truly on the color and not on the object. The necessary ingredients were: a flashlight, decorative purple glass vase filler gems (not sure if that's a real term, but that's what Amazon called them), and a piece of white paper.

It took quite a few attempts for Keith to get the light to really bring out the color of the gems, instead of them looking washed out. The key was that he actually took off the top of the flashlight, and put the gems inside the flashlight, completely covering the light. Then he taped a piece of white paper to the flashlight to catch the reflected light. Here's the set-up:



















And here's the final shot. When choosing it on the computer, he said, "I might not do any processing with this picture! I know I say that every week, but it looks really good as is ...." And, of course, he changed his mind. He darkened the overall image so that everything else really dropped away except the purple. I like that, even if you had no idea what the photo challenge was, there's a good chance that "purple" would be the first word that comes to your mind to describe this image. I also like that it's so different from many other pictures he's taken. He's really utilizing the opportunity to expand his abilities. Next week: Circle!