Traveling Ugly Vase Challenge, Part 1

I’m in a very small group of photographer ladies who love macro, floral, and creative photography. Our little group has been learning all types of techniques together this past 7 months or so. We took a break from these learning adventures over the holidays, and I guess we felt like we had too much time on our hands, haha.

One gal mentioned an Ugly Vase Challenge, where we each buy the ugliest vase we can find at a thrift store and try to get some nice photos with it. We spend a little time with the vase we purchased and then mail the vases in rotation each month.

I had no problem finding the ugliest vase. I saw it the second I walked into Savers. It is so ugly, I couldn’t come up with any thoughts on composition. I was hoping my vintage blue bottles would complement the eucalyptus and bring out the blues in the vase.

Well, that was ok, but I still struggled with ideas on how to set this up. I was also learning my new camera with this set of images.

A week or so later, I set up a little different background and surface and got these.

My backdrop is actually a watercolor I painted last summer. There’s no design to it really, just a set of swirling colors painted on the paper. When the subject is pulled away from the backdrop, the backdrop falls out of focus and provides a complementary background. The surface I set the vase on is the backside of some craft / wrapping paper I bought at the Dollar Tree :). I always have fresh eucalyptus from Trader Joe’s in the house, and it always doubles as a photo prop.

I admit, I struggled with composition the whole way through these images. Just sayin’! This last set, below, is my favorite of the three sets. I’m not totally cray about any of them though.

My surface is just a 30” x 30” piece of wallboard with some vinyl wood planks laid together on top.

This last image was taken with the Lensbaby Trio -28mm - Velvet setting.

I used my Nikon z6ii, Nikkor 105mm macro, Lensbaby Trio Velvet / Twist /Sweet, Lensbaby Sweet 50mm, Vintage Pentax 50mm, and the Arsat 80mm (an amazing vintage Russian lens - actually a scope for a gun). I used my strobe on the first set, the second and third were all natural light w/ a reflector.

So….. I mail off my vase in the morning to the next photographer! And later this week, I’ll receive another one in the mail! Hopefully I’ll have a little more inspiration with it!

I’d love to know you’ve stopped by, leave a comment!