the very merry christmas project

every year, belle and i get together for a christmas celebration. we meet during the busiest time of the shopping season and set a budget for each other's christmas gifts. then we shop. yes, it's crazy but it's become somewhat of a tradition. we take turns thinking up the themes. a few years ago, belle introduced a photography component to our annual celebration and this year, it was my turn to think of a project. i decided on the very abstract concept of the twelve months of christmas - which was quite obviously based on the song, the twelve days of christmas.

for january, we had to put together an image inspired by twelve drummers drumming.



the above image is my interpretation of the theme. when i think of drums, i think of movement, intensity, and colour. i combined two photos to create the final image.

a) the hand. this was the first photo i took the day belle and i met for the challenge. i immediately knew i wanted to use the photo because the composition reminded me of a drummer's hands. the only problem was that the person in the billboard was holding an ipod. so i just made sure to remove all traces of the ipod when i used this image.

{ canon 7d | canon 35mm f/1.4 | iso 200 | f/1.4 | 1/50 sec | no flash }

b) the colour. i took a photo of some streaks of colour on a whim. i am really into abstracts lately and these colours caught my eye immediately. i manually adjusted my focus so the colours became slightly blurred.

{ canon 7d | canon 35mm f/1.4 | iso 200 | f/1.4 | 1/50 sec | no flash }

when i looked at the blended image with the two photographs, i felt like something was missing. the link between my image and the theme was a little too loose for my liking. i added the words as an afterthought. i love typeface anyway and this little addition made me much happier with the final result.

i can't wait to see what belle came up with!