Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON
This shot was taken while I was eating lunch at the High Country Inn in Whitehorse, literally a few minutes after I completed a journey of more than 24 hours since I walked out of my own front door in Melbourne.
These sachets in front of me on the table caught my eye because of the range of colours and the strong, easily definable lines and individual angles and kinks of their respective edges.
I had two cameras in my shoulder bag, but I opted for my Pentax K100D because it had my favourite lens, the versatile 18-125mm Sigma lens on it. I only took one shot and later, when I looked at my images on my laptop that night, I was quite gratified with the clarity of the result.
What you're looking at here is simply a scaled-down, low-resolution version of the original, but on the high-res shot you can actually see the little details on the corner of the sachets. I was very pleased with this result, because it looks as though I've used a macro lens instead.
I guess I was lucky because the light was fairly good. But if you're keen on the details, I shot this at F8 and 1/90 of a second.
I guess this is also the best place to answer a question I got asked on Friday - how many shots do I take before I'm satisfied with an image? The answer to that is very simple. I shoot on instinct, just as I write my novels. So if I'm satisfied with the first shot, I don't hit the shutter a second time.
If I'm shooting a landscape and it's a wide vista and the light is changing, I'll shoot between two and four frames or more if the situation demands. I'll shoot half a dozen if I am trying to capture a scene from several angles.
But I am drawn to these unusual shots of everyday objects and maybe - just maybe - it says something about my approach to photography, because they are generally the result of a single frame.
(The Odd Shots concept came from Katney. Say "G'day" to her.)
