Yellow Yellow

Last week, the camera club held its final competition of the year. I've enjoyed the competitions, because rather than going through my stash of fairly recent photos to see which ones I can enter, I try to take new ones specifically for the competition. 

This latest competition had a theme of 'Mostly Yellow'. I first thought about using my yellow Pyrex.

Then I thought about using sunflowers and of course a typewriter.

However, for the past few competitions, I've tried to do something unusual and creative with crafty objects. (Either that, or I take photos of thrifted shoes, which is equally fun.) I wanted to end the camera club season with a nod to my signature style.

Having no yellow shoes on hand this time, 

I decided to use the sewing supplies. 

I had an idea in my head of how to arrange the objects, but instead I started out just photographing the stuff haphazardly:

(It clearly wasn't working. Even if I had turned the measuring tap the other way, something wasn't right here.)

Once I straightened out the tape measure, I thought things improved slightly. 

But the photos still weren't there yet.

In the end, I remembered my original idea and decided to spell out 'yellow':

And I loved it! 

Apparently the judges did too. It scored very well and I walked away with first place in the 'Mostly Yellow' category. In fact, I got three first place ribbons that night -- I tied for first with a black and white print, and I also tied for first with my color print. 

One of the judges asked how long it took me to gather the yellow items. I somewhat sheepishly admitted that everything was already in my stash of supplies -- I needed to only root through a container. Then she wanted to know how long it took me to arrange it. Honestly, not long. Even though I played around with the orientation of the supplies for a while before I actually spelled the word, I knew from the start what I wanted to do. 

It's not always like that though. Usually my original thoughts are only a seed for what the photo or craft becomes. Sometimes it takes me an hour or more to arrange stuff and figure out where I want things to go. Other times though, the first ideas are the real deal, or at least fairly close. If I had actually scribbled down my idea, my first sketch would have looked similar to the photo above -- only I would have drawn a yellow zipper for the Y. (I was too cheap to buy a yellow zipper, so I used what I already had.)

The black background made the whole thing stand out. Plus, as one judge said, 'Everything looks great on black velvet!' In my case, I used a black scarf. I laid it on the floor, arranged the items and aimed the camera straight down.  

I liked this idea so much that I may have to spell out the rest of the rainbow. I'm sure I already have the craft supplies for the job.