Hi there, If you’ve missed my first blog well I’ll give you a short recap, I’ve challenged myself to photograph something/anything a day using only my Canon 650D and 18-200 mm lens. I won’t be using any other equipment besides that nor will I use photoshop to enhance my image.

Well, I thought I’d go easy on myself and start with something that I am very comfortable to photograph. The theme or the Idea I had in mind is to photograph an ancient Japanese clay teapot and its teacup in a centre table close to the window.

I had numerous trials; I’ll show you my 1st attempt, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and my final attempt.

1st shot

2nd shot

3rd shot

5th shot

As you can see at the images above, I’ve done some alteration on how I shot each image.

The first Image, well as you can see the shot is in a landscape, it was simple. (ISO800, 40 f5.6) I felt like I can do better than this, I mean there was nothing unusual, to be honest, this teapot isn’t special at all, but the goal is to make it look unique and give it oomph.

So I took numerous (I shot the hell out of it) shot in different angle until I found the shot I believe has the potential. Then, I pulled up the curtain to let more light in, so I can see a bit of the outside, and instantly I saw a dramatic change in the image. I quickly saw a foreground, midground and a background. The next thing I did was change my shot to portrait since I want the whole attention to the teapot and the teacup and then changed my camera settings to compensate for the light that is coming in, my camera settings (1600ISO, 200, f13).  The end product, well it was a bit dark, but I’ve noticed the shadow of the teapot, and I’m always a big fan of reflections and shadows, so definitely that’s going to be a keeper on my next trial.

On my third attempt, I want the foreground to be brighter. So, I’ve lowered down the shutter speed to 30. Why? because If I lower my f-stop, the background would go over and the background would just be plain white. Well, as you can see I was wrong, the background was a blowout but I got my foreground brighter.

So on my fourth attempt, I’ve raised my shutter speed to 80 and added some reflectors to the image. As you can see from the image below, I pinned a white paper on the left side and also on the right (I had to take off the right-hand side so you can see the whole thing).

Here’s the product of my fourth attempt (image below), I thought it’s perfect but I still felt I can still push it more.

I thought, how about I add some smoke on the teapot, to make it look like its hot. So I experimented. I turned on my electric kettle and boiled some water. I added the boiling water to the teapot and cup, but the smoke wasn’t visible. The next thing I did was lit up some matches and quickly placed it in the pot and what did you know, it works.

So here’s the final product my friends, let me know what you think and maybe you could tell me as well what I should take a photo tomorrow.