A pot of hot tea is a great way to begin the day – even with camera in hand.

Being a fairly active member of the art Discussions (forum) at Fine Art America I have been involved in several “Art Challenges” over the last year. These involve posting one new piece of art based on a theme, one piece per day for a set number of days. The Forum Moderator, Abbie (a talented painter and photographer), creates these challenges along with the help of another uniquely talented artist, Donna. These challenges help us, as artist-participants, focus for a period of time on a particular theme, which encourages new creativity. We all get to see how colleagues interpret the theme, creating a win-win activity for all involved.

The current challenge is “7 Day Kitchen Macro Images” and has about 30 guinea pigs, er – participants, creating close-up images of things in/around a kitchen. I started off with my morning kitchen routine of making a pot of tea for my wife and a cup of coffee for me. My only change in routine was to have my camera in hand affixed with a macro (close-up) lens. My first image was of the fire used to heat the teapot full of water.

Yesterday, day #1 of the Challenge, I heated the water for a pot of tea – so today (day #2) I added in the tea bag. The teabag was easier to photograph than the gas flame because I didn’t have to put the camera right on the stove near the burners.

I was able to hang the tea bag by its string and photograph it with a shallow depth of field to blur out the background, which is actually a brown wicker-back chair near a window. A tea bag, by itself, is rather plain so I edited this into a simulated charcoal sketch presentation.

Link: Blue Flames Heating Up the Teapot Expressionism

Link: Tea Bag Rendered in Charcoal

Tomorrow I will need to photograph a cup of coffee as it is being brewed. 🙂

Visit my FAA gallery at Bill Swartwout Photography.