My daily cuppa
Lauren Scott takes on an original photo challenge prompted by the New Year
When New Year’s Day rolls around, it feels like a natural time to refresh every element in life – photography included. There are plenty of these projects to try, such as the 365 Challenge (so named because you take one photo every day of the year). These can often feel a bit forced and restrictive, however – and not everyone wants to feel committed to taking a good photo each day.
With this project, we want to show you that there are other ways to photograph the meaningful everyday moments of life. I chose to shoot my daily cup of tea, as it’s a ritual that is important to me and happens in a similar way every morning. Mugs, lighting and scenery all changed from shot to shot. I used the same lens to keep the look slightly more consistent, but you don’t have to.
If there’s something you do habitually on a daily basis – be it walking the dog, reading a book or laying the table for a family dinner – it’ll make the perfect series. If fashion is important to you, for example, you could take a shot of your daily outfit before putting it on.
Photographs serve as a way to record the smaller moments in life just as well as the momentous, and that’s what the key is here. Once I felt like I’d exhausted the series, I stopped shooting.
Try to look at the ordinary things around you, and find ways to make your routine magical. Once you’ve got a set of images, you can edit them to make a consistent and personal series. Editing with presets
By applying the same edited ‘look’ across your images, this will make them appear more consistent when they’re viewed as a set. If you edit in Lightroom, it’s easy to batch-process images with the same processing settings or apply a preset.
In Camera Raw, you can also save a preset of settings. Once you’ve edited an image you’re happy with, go to the Presets tab, click on the New Preset icon (next to the dustbin) and then save however many of the editing parameters you want to be applied when you come to use that preset again. Once your next image is open, simply click on your saved preset from the same tab, and the same editing steps will be applied – much less faffing about with sliders.