“Fennel is the spice for Wednesdays.
The smell of changes to come.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Writing about the sea and photographing shells yesterday proved to be very expensive. My friends and I have decided to go for a long weekend trip to the Isle of Wight in the Summer ( if Summer ever happens) to a beautiful cottage with the most amazing views. We were planning it anyway, but the blog yesterday just sparked my enthusiasm for a holiday especially over there! So I thought that today I should probably photograph something less likely to inspire expensive ventures. Spices!
We have a cupboard full of beautiful spices, but sadly it was not possible to photograph them all. That and my nose probably wouldn’t have taken that much more sneezing! So I stuck with Cumin, Star Anise, Curry Powder, Fennel and Caraway Seeds.
I’m not sure where the inspiration came from just that I’ve been enjoying photographing still life lately and didn’t really want to stop! That and it’s grey, overcast and threatening rain. I have some fantastic nature locations sorted ready for when the sun pops out again including some bluebell woods so hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to stop photographing around the house!
A few people have asked me lately how I do my backgrounds in close up still life shots. I tend to not think about it much and rarely set anything up deliberately. But with the seashell yesterday I taped a piece of pink card to the window – on the outside though so that it softened the colour blending through. Today I used a rather worn chopping board to set the spoons up on (see my first shot at the top) and photographed the spices and seeds directly below a glowy orange light that we have set in the kitchen cupboard above. That gave the copper hue and I fiddled around with zoom and such. I shoot on Auto. It’s bad I know.
Kathryn Dawson Photography 