color accent: billiard examples

I love pouring through my old archives when I feel a lack of inspiration, because looking back at my past work rarely fails to get my creative brain churning. I'm never quite sure what I'll find when I hook up my trusty external hard drive--old classics that I still feel proud of and inspired by; ideas that were great, but that I didn't quite succeed in capturing which pushes me to try again; or phases and obsessions in certain styles of photography.

Today I found an abundance of pictures from the time when I was obsessed with my tiny Canon PowerShot. I had purchased it for a vacation, not wanting to lug around my SLR, but given its portable size I decided to keep it in my purse at all times from there on out. This led me to take even more pictures than usual, because I always had a camera with me and when I felt inspired by something or just wanted to play around, I could. Interestingly, I've taken some of my favorite shots with that little camera.

I would wager that most people just point and shoot (as the name suggests), but I was obsessed with playing around with the surprisingly vast amount of settings. My favorite was "color accent" and I got lost in that setting for a good 6-month period. I really loved the idea of composing my pictures based on one color I wanted to pop--for whatever reason, I usually went with green or yellow. Basically, the camera reads everything as black and white other than items that have even the smallest hint of the color you choose to accent.

Here are some examples:

Regular color settings

The same dart board with a green color accent

Green and yellow accent (P.S. I miss my super long hair!)

Green accent. The lime in his drink being the only touch of green in the frame. Love!

Blue color accent.

The same scene with a green color accent.

There is always something new to discover on your camera so don't hesitate to fool around, even if you don't know what you are doing! That is exactly how I found myself in love with photography. Sometimes you have to let yourself play around and make mistakes in order to find something truly inspiring.