Day 22: Ooo! A Penny!

What it is, readah?! Here we are. Day 22. And what a day it's been. It was -4 degrees outside when I left for work this morning. That's cold. Very cold. I'm still attempting to not feel chilled. But at least I've got pictures and this blog to distract me, I suppose.

Today's photos (3 today!) come from work at the Book Nook. I found this strange little wood thing in the back. I'm not exactly sure what it is or what it's used for. A rack of some sort. Anyway. That's not important. Here's the first photo of it.

1/60 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 400.
Click image for larger version.

I set the wood thingy (as it shall heretofore be known) up on some paperbacks so it was angled down towards the counter. I think it gives it a nifty, optical illusion look. The right side looks like it could be resting on the counter, but then the left side has shadow below it. If you focus on the farthest part of the wood thingy it looks like it might be sticking out of a wall. Kind of fun, eh?

For the next picture, I spent a long time in set-up. I tried balancing pennies on the spokes of the wood thingy that were sticking up. It was ridiculously difficult to complete. I'd get one penny on and in the process of placing the next one, would bump the first one off. That went on for quite some time. Eventually I got a couple to stay on.

1/40 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 400.
Click image for larger version.

As you can see there's a big difference in color and tone between these two photos, though both were taken in the exact same light at almost the exact same camera settings. The first image (the one without the pennies) is, for the most part, the way the image looked straight out of camera. But for this one, I wanted to pull some of the yellowish out of the counter because I wanted the copper color of the pennies to stick out more. So I adjusted the white balance in Aperture (I don't remember exactly which way I moved the sliders. I think I turned the Temperature down some.). I also like the "optical-ness" of this one. I really like close shots taken at wide-angles. It makes things skew out of perspective a little. Almost fish-eye-like, but not quite as crazy.

1/20 sec. exposure at F/4.5. ISO 400.
Click image for larger version.

In this last shot, I moved the wood thingy to the edge so the pegs that the pennies were rested on were hanging off of the counter. I wanted to get in below it. Of course, though I tried to be as careful as possible, the pennies fell off during the move so I spent another insane amount of time getting them back onto the pegs. I'm not sure exactly why I decided to output this one in monochrome. Looking at it now, I don't think it gives the picture any "more" than it would have had in color. I do like how the peg has a reflection in the penny. They were pretty shiny. I don't know how well that showed up in the color version, so maybe I'll use that as my excuse for monochrome.

I took a bunch more photos of the wood thingy and the wood thingy with pennies. Some of them are pretty okay, but these three were my favorites. Speaking of favorites, why haven't you left a comment for the contest yet?! Admit it. You all hate me, don't you? I knew it. I'm crawling back under my rock now. *sniff* *sniff* Buh-byeeeeeee.