Artsy Schmartsy

As office Christmas parties go, ours has always been a good one. While nothing we do ever again would match the glamour of the black-tie gala dinner of 2006, last night’s gig was a great one. There were only two glitches that I can recall which were quickly resolved. We had a spectacular response to the charity raffle draw, raising over US$1600 in under three hours of frantic ticket-selling. There were the expected and much-appreciated impromptu prize donations from our guests and the very engaging crowd during the actual raffle draw.

The downside? My legs and feet are still screaming at me. Since Tim didn’t need me much during the evening I snuck back into the lobby to sit myself down. Photo opportunities abound with our pretty, pretty Christmas tree. I don’t quite like the yellow glow but it seems to work well.

Remnants of the Secret Santa pressies under the tree

Our usual white lamps and brown cushions were discarded for the Christmas red shades. Here’s my attempt at an artsy shot of one of the lamps on the front desk. Love the lights in the background!

Are those berries edible?

This afternoon, I attended a Macro Photography class organised by Gulf Photo Plus. It’s an eye-opener. I have had my 70-200mm lens for a while now and have always been frustrated at not being able to use it properly. Partly because I didn’t understand how the damned thing worked! And partly because I have always avoided lugging around my tripod unless I really need it.

Thinking I didn’t have the right gear, yesterday I bought a Sigma 70mm /f2.8 macro lens; only because the Canon 100mm macro lens costs twice as much! It’s perfect! I think the Nifty Fifty would also work for macro photography but you’d probably need extension tubes; which I had to buy because they were selling it for much lower than the market price.

We had over 4 hours of shooting time, about an hour of which was spent trying to figure out the best camera settings. By the time I figured it all out, it was lunch time and I was hungry! After fuelling up I went back to work. They brought us props such as fresh flowers, peppers, M n M’s, coloured paperclips, sea shells, etc. With 15 of us in the class it was unfair to hog the best piece of props so I had to keep switching. And since there was only one desk lamp on the desk I shared with my partner Arnie, I had to work with just the flourescent lighting.

I need to practice, especially now that I know the basics. It does make you see things from a different perspective. With macro work, forget about the bgger picture, you want to focus on the details here!

Here are some of the photos I took which I think are decent enough. I didn’t give them my CF card though for the critique because I was too chicken.

Oh and there was this one guy, whom we all dubbed The Pepper Man, who spent over 2 hours fiddling with, spraying water on, lighting, rotating this red capsicum and was on the verge of frustration that he swore never to look at another pepper ever again! His pepper shots were quite good though. Okay, on to the photos.

I love how you could see the pollen

Water droplets on flowers are overdone but it’s a good subject

One of the extension tubes became a good prop

Different coloured threads are a good subject

Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend? 🙂

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