Patterns & Textures in 12 Clicks

Last week I went out on two occasions to scout out good locations for photoshoots. I was out for a good couple of hours and Oh. My. Gosh. NOTHING. I realize a couple of hours isn't all that long, but when you spend that entire time looking and not finding anything good, then everything just starts to look terrible because you're no longer hoping for anything good. So I talked to a friend of mine about it, and she suggested I scale back my focus and just look for details instead of whole backdrops. She and several other friends gave me a lot of great feedback from my recent post, Our House in 12 Clicks (thanks, all!), and it was a good way to help me keep honing my technical skills and developing my creativity, so I thought I'd take my friend's advice and limit myself to another 12 clicks. Last Friday I got out on my bike and rode around looking specifically for patterns and textures (they can kinda overlap). I wasn't necessarily looking for big enough spaces to use as backdrops for photos, just trying to force myself to look more closely at everything around me and really something interesting. Here's what I came up with. I decided to convert them all to B&W so that color doesn't interfere with the purpose of the images. I also refrained from vignetting them, in case they come in handy as texture overlays later. (I'm thinkin' that was also a good call because I love vignetting photos--probably too much.)

Again, had to take that last shot twice; first one was overexposed. Someday I'll get all my shots right the first time, but for now 11 out of 12 ain't bad.

And, since I spent half of this assignment in Eric's office, here are a couple of snapshots of his decorating style. Yes, he totally pulled all those computer keys off an old keyboard.