Decapitation

It was a chill grey morning, slightly misty and with a very flat light. I wasn't feeling on top of it anyway and so  left the camera at home. Naturally, The Rule came into effect and we had a close encounter with a deer. Ho, hum. Always the way.

Once home I spent a few minutes dead-heading one of my pot plants and then decided to have a go at getting to grips with the new Sony. I have an assignment to do for my photography course, involving Manual Mode, and the pot plant and dead heads seemed to offer a useful and stationary subject.

The plant now sits on the "new" coffee table, which we bought earlier this week. I had seen an ad in one of the Facebook Sales and Wants groups for our rough geographical area, quite liked the photo of the Oak Coffee Table, and thus we had a lovely ride out and cross the border into Charentes. I didn't take a camera and The Rule definitely came into effect. We passed through gorgeous scenery, arrived at the most fabulously quaint village with many a photo opportunity on offer, and landed up at a very distinctive Chambre d'Hotes. 

I liked the table as much as I had expected to. It was indeed solid oak, not veneered, and it had a lovely colour to it. It is however obviously not an antique, but Repro. Good quality Repro, it must be said but the mechanical distressing gets the better of me. It annoys me and my eye cannot help but look for repetitions in the "scratch marks" and "worm holes". Overall though, far nicer than its predecessor and I particularly welcome the drop leaf extensions at each end. It will prove useful for still life work, I believe. Later today I hope to try some shots of my new spinning fibre but we do have to go out to look at a couple of second-hand leather chairs that may look mighty fine paired with the oak table...

Oh, for once I get to say "straight from the camera" though personally I believe that phrase to be pointless, meaningless, and very over-worked. :-)

This is a Fine quality Small jpeg; they come out at about 11MB, making them more than a touch easier to handle with Lightroom on my laptop. The RAW files are proving to be impossible at this time. Thankfully the Sony produces very, very good jpegs. What do you think? 

Constructive comments on the manual settings very welcome. I am in full learning mode.