No chance of a blue sky this afternoon when I was ready to take today's photo. Rather overcast but no sign of rain, unfortunately.
The idea behind today's prompt was to do with capturing the natural afternoon light. We have been asked to take photos where we've used the 'Golden Hour' which is that time right before sunset where the light is warm and indirect. The 'Blue Hour', which I haven't come across before, is either right before sunrise, or just after sunset. Apparently that's a good time to photograph lights and night scenes.
We were given an 'out' if we didn't get an opportunity to catch the 'Blue Hour' hence the other options of a crayon or the colour. I remember doing blue pencils for a prompt last year, so didn't want to repeat a photo. I tried some shots of the lovely blue plates we've picked up in our travels, but they just didn't photograph well. Oh how I wish today's prompt was red, as I just picked a heap of cherry tomatoes! Back to blue. I had a blue towel hanging over an outside chair, so I took a couple of shots of it - not so exciting, and then I noticed a blue pen sitting on the table. Nothing to lose. I took several shots of it with my macro lens and used the towel as my background. I was aiming to get a sharp focus on the ballpoint and the rest of the pen fading away. I quite like the different shades of blue in the background. I love how the macro lens gives such wonderful blurred effects, especially when the lens is wide open.
I'm still tending to work in aperture mode, however and tend to set the ISO on auto. I need to sit down and really concentrate on getting my manual skills happening so that I can have a better control over how I'm shooting a scene or subject. I'll get there.
Seeing this was shot at such a high ISO I've used the noise reduction slider in Lightroom, plus other minor adjustments in the tone panel.