Monday, November 23, 2015

Change


Change.

Literally.

   I don't mean I am changing my clothes or changing my outlook on life, nothing profound like that. I have a very nasty habit of collecting my change. Or perhaps it is a good habit I don't know. If you have ever seen my computer desk it is always full of multiple layers of coins. Every month or so I get tired of it, throw it in this old cloth bag I got a long time ago, then continue to layer more change onto my desk. Eventually I end up with a lot of money saved up. In this case, 62,000won worth of change. Not a bad chunk of change if I might say so myself... ah... knee slapper.

   At about 2 in the morning I was lying in bed when suddenly I got the idea for this photo. So I stacked up all my change and arranged it in neat rows. Artistic inspiration sometimes comes at the most inconvenient of times and leads us down paths that are... odd I must admit.

Click on any image to enlarge it.
   First, I don't have a macro lens. For those learning photography perhaps I will cover what a macro lens is sometime in the future. But basically it allows you to focus really close to a subject. Usually insects or flowers. This is good for small things. Normal lenses, however, have to focus on things a bit further away from them. I first tried my 85mm to try and get at least a nice tight crop on the coins. It turns out that I had to be so far back to focus that it just ended up looking dull. It simply wasn't the photo I had in my head.

   But then I remembered there are these really awful, cheap lens converters on eBay all the time that basically allow you to mount your lens backwards and get a little bit closer to a macro look. I don't, and never want to, own one of those converters but I had an idea. I took off my 85mm and held it up to the body backwards and took the shot. What I got was kind of interesting. Not what I wanted of course, but I thought I would just play around anyways.

   Ultimately I had to rely on my phone for the image at the top of this post. Yes, thousands of dollars spent on camera gear and my phone was able to do what my gear couldn't. As I have said in the past, having expensive gear does not make you a photographer. A photographer can use any camera and be able to create something. The only issue is the image quality, it is a tiny sensor after all and can only shoot JPEG files. It was, however, just for fun and I kinda like it. What do you think?

No comments:

Post a Comment