Locket

After yesterday's sunny walk by the Kennet and Avon canal, it's a very grey and dismal day, so I'm posting a photo that was taken for this week's assignment for the photography course I'm doing. The theme is favourite place, person or thing.

This was an 18th birthday present from my late mother. The photograph is of my late father. I had great difficulty in photographing this. Too much light and the photo in the locket was obscured: too little light and the whole thing was blurred. I increased the ISO to 400 but the shutter speed was still 1 second - too long for a hand-held shot. I used Elements to give a square crop, to sharpen the image, and to adjust the colour curves to increase the contrast. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvements (but I already realise that I need to use a tripod!)

PS my feet have recovered!