A Grade of 'Meh+'

My day job is gone and I have not yet found the right next one. I am fortunate that I have the leisure to cherry pick what I am seeking rather than being forced to take any old job. One of the things that creates is a sense of space in time. I am not rushed each day, and I find I can allow myself to linger over things I might have glanced at during a more hectic period of my life. In a small way, I feel like it is a return to some undefined time period in which a gentleman of some leisure could invest himself in studying a painting, reading philosophy, or perhaps learning to play a new tune that has been in his head and needing to come out. I am enjoying the sensation.

Today I looked at advertisements. In particular I looked at product ads that were based on photography. I came away inspired to play, to grab a few things at hand and see what resulted. Product images are not my photographic raison d'être and so I had no high hopes that I would be the next wunderkind of the ad world. No, it was merely for fun and the experience of it.



I used what was at hand. This bottle of FEW small batch gin seemed perfect, as it was purchased with the scant funds from a charity shoot (the agreed upon price for the shoot was about 7% of what I would otherwise have made at my lowest rate) where the fee for my services was "a bottle of gin." So armed with a prop that was already photographically sympathetic, I grabbed the next appropriate thing, a martini glass. The mums are pretty much the last thing blooming in my yard and had to stand in for the botanicals used in making gin.

Overall I give myself a grade of 'Meh+'. The background is simple, yet fun. The lighting could be a lot better but it is not terrible. I use some strange camera settings (remember that this was about play): F/22 with the shutter open for 2 seconds at ISO 100. During that extended period I manually popped a single Nikon SB-24 set at 1/16 power from camera left. I could have used a bit less power had the flash allowed it, or if my arms had been longer, could have moved it a few feet further away. I used Photoshop to crop it and warm it up a bit, and to add the text.

I will keep looking at ads, and seeing if I can learn new things. And as I type these last few words, I am sipping an icy cold martini. Ahh!