Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great week. Me? I've been doing Okay ,Well that's not true I've been in a photographic slump! I have been in it for a while and needed something to snap me out of it. I don't want to buy anything camera related to get me going because I have made the "new years" resolution not to buy any more camera gear this year and I haven't.  But it seems that buying new gear is what I usually do to get me out of the slump so what do I do now? I haven't really touched my big camera since my South Dakota trip I have been using a point and shoot or my iPhone mostly. I met my wingman Robert at McDonals for a cup of coffee. (You know that's what us old guys do) LOL and he come up with a challenge. To go to Hobby Lobby with only a 10 dollar bill and find something to shoot and go home and make some photo's. That's the challenge. The whole goal of this challenge was just get out camera's out and shoot. It doesn't have to be a work of art just something to remind ourselves why we love photography. So we went to Hobby Lobby across the street and started browsing around. It's the beginning of August and they already have Fall pumpkin stuff and Christmas stuff out! Drives me nuts! But anyway we started looking and they have lots of stuff to see and remember the 10 bucks is the limit. Robert found something right away a western themed object. And I was looking for something Bicycle related because I've really been into cycling lately. But I came across some licenses plate letters and my mind started working. I could spell out my name " Max" but that was too short. I could spell out "GAPC ROCKS" (Goldsboro Area Photography Club) but it was too many letters and would put me over the 10 dollar limit. So I settled with just GAPC . So I picked out the letters making sure I had the right ones. I'm not the best speller. LOL I also picked up a gray piece of paper for a background. (I should have gotten another color) After a while we headed to the cash register to pay for our Loot. My total came to 8.59 and Roberts came to 8.87  and I was the winner with the cheapest loot. While I danced a jig Robert hobbled out limping. (He has a bad back and is awaiting surgery) So he limps and twiches every now and then as the pain from his back stabs at him. Can't wait till he gets his surgery and is back to recovery. I feel bad making fun of someone with a disability. (Ha Not really) LOL Well I brought my stuff home and started the Photoshoot portion of the challenge. I thought mine would look good with a Beachy background but didn't really have anything and while I was looking out the Kitchen window I saw where I have a little coffee station where the letters would look good. I had a shadow off of a decorative bottle that sits there and I placed a few Items there and set up the letters . I wanted to have a strong light to make a shadow off of the bottle there and the letters were suppose to be just part of the scene not front and center. I got a LED light and set up a Light stand to put it on and cranked it up where I had a good shadow on the wall of the bottle. I took a few compositions and liked what I came up with. The next shot was to put the letters on the piece of paper that I bought so when I got them to photoshop I could overlay a texture over the letters and make it look cool. For lighting of this shot I used a little flash on TTL(Through the lens metering) and pointed it at the ceiling . I took a few shots like this until I got the exposure that I wanted. The third shot I got was with the letters on some boards that I have to give it a rustic look. I used the same lighting technique as I did with the gray background with a small flash pointed at the ceiling . I pulled all of the photo's into Adobe Lightroom and started editing. For the first shot that I took in the Kitchen I edited it normal and desaturated it just a little bit. For the second one on the sheet of gray paper I took a textured photo and merged it with the photo I took in Photoshop. For the last photo I edited it normal. 

Now are these photo's works of Art ? Mine certainly aren't . But we did achieve our goal of getting our camera's out and taking some photo's. Which neither of us have done lately. It was a fun challenge and one you can do and it only cost 10 bucks. Try it and let me know the results. Until next week get out and shoot! 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link