I am still trying to work on composition since my course – as well as my lighting techniques.

The things that I learned (at risk of repeating myself) were to treat the background as a separate entity, lighting it separately – this I have done here, secondly to use long depth of field as much as possible – this is f19 and even with f19, the focus is slipping a bit on the pestle and mortar…..though in fact that works for me on this shot – I wanted the focus on the word, not the object. I also learned about lighting things with an appropriately sized light source so this is my new soft box lighting my foreground and my new snoot restricting the spread of the light on the background to create the semi-vignette effect.

As with everything new to me, it takes me a long time to get comfortable with something and this is just the beginning of this particular journey. I still didn’t really ‘get’ some of the compositional stuff I was learning about things that detract from an image or lead the eye away from the subject. Now I look at the book, I wonder if the drawing on the left hand page does that or not – it doesn’t for me, I like the composition but who knows what a real artist would think?

In this case, the subject is a very old dictionary, with ‘free gaffer tape’ on its spine that was left here by Mad Maureen when we moved in. I have been looking for an excuse to photograph it and today is the day. The last time I did a dictionary, it was with an electric saw running through it and I got a complete lambasting for being so cruel to a book. The funny side of the story was that the book was a Pitmans Shorthand:English dictionary so my view, bought from a charity shop (so money to a good cause for an unwanted book) that I felt was completely useless in the modern age – whoever uses shorthand these days when we all two-fingered type ourselves?

Oh how I loved last year's shot of two of my favourite folks!