12 Days of Christmas, Day 8

It’s New Year’s Eve and nearly time for your goals for the coming year to kick in. One of mine is to take on more personal projects, like this one I shot.

We took a trip down to Ludlow in Shropshire and one of the reasons was to buy some incredible produce. Ludlow has long been a favourite place to visit, with all the old architecture and food markets, it’s just a nice day out.

We were going to be creating a whole bunch of dishes for Salted Mint, that’s our food blog, and I’d been wanting to create something simple and rustic for a long time. The textures and natural look to the onions and garlic, all tied together was just what I wanted. I was after a real rustic farmhouse kind of feel.

This was also a lighting exercise using a gridded strip box and a single Speedlite. The low-level light accentuates the textures and helps tell a story, which I then take advantage of in editing. I created a preset for this vintage, arty kind of look, which once applied, I tweak to suit the image.

It’s so important for us to do personal projects, no matter what we spend our lives doing. After all, in regular working life, we call them hobbies. When you turn a hobby into a career, you still need a creative and enjoyable outlet.

That’s all for day 8 but do let me know, in the comments below, what personal projects or hobbies you’ll be taking on this coming year.

JT