DDW challenge: Acervuline = Little heaps

I’m hanging round the door of Anniemay’s study waiting for the right moment. She has her camera set up and appears to focussing on a bag of diamonds (diamonds? - she has a bag of diamonds? Is there a secret life I know nothing about?).

I try the helpless look; “I don’t have a macro lens. How am I supposed to photograph ‘little heaps’ ?”. I can see her thinking “is this where I’m supposed to offer to lend him my macro lens?” I know enough childhood stories to understand that sharing of toys does not come easily to my wife.

I explain that I’m still engaged in my own challenge of only using my standard lens. So big close ups of little heaps is a ‘no-no’. “Can’t you just do one big heap instead?” This gives me an idea and I turn to wikipedia (who happily shares his toys) for definitions of acervuline.

I come up with small clusters. Ah - so ‘small’ might infer number rather than size - as in a few stones. Which is what I eventually settle on.

These pebbles sit on a chest of drawers in our bedroom and I spend about half an hour waiting for the sun to cast a shadow through the venetian blinds. My standard lens allows me to focus as close as 25cm, which is good enough for a little heap of stones.

This is day 12 of using a fixed focal length lens. After a nervous start, I'm beginning to find it very liberating. I used to spend a lot of time zooming in and out trying to decide what to make of the scene in front of me. Now I only have one view - so if it doesn't work I quickly move on to something else.

I'm going to come unstuck at some point, but for the moment I'm happy to carry on. I wouldn't have thought to do this without blip.