Four Elements

I decided to do a photo shoot on elements as there are four of them so that relates to the numbers theme. This helps link in Sam Kaplan as he had the technique of taking still life photos to respond to birthdays. To ensure it was my own work, I changed the idea of birthdays to numbers.
I ensured the photos looked abstract so they linked in with Chris Jordan's techniques as he always did abstract work. It also makes my photos more interesting.
To link in Annabelle Breaky, I tried to ensure all photos looked bright to link in her techniques of using bright lighting.

One of the elements is earth, and I represented this by taking photos of soil. I took it close up so you can clearly see all the parts of the soil. 
I used an aperture of F/10 and a shutter speed of 1/20 sec because I was using natural lighting and wanted to capture the different textures. 
The colours are all dark browns and blacks, but the bright lighting makes it look softer. 
I would improve this image by ensuring all areas are sharp as there are some out of focus areas near the bottom left.

The next element is wind, and as wind is invisible I chose to take photos of a wind flower to show the wind blowing it. 
I used an aperture of F/11 and a shutter speed of 1/60 as I needed to use a slow shutter speed to show the movement of the wind moving the petals. 
The colours are bright green, blue, red, pink, orange and yellow which creates a fun atmosphere. 
I would improve this image by getting closer as I feel the background is distracting and you know what it is so it isn't abstract.

I decided to do this improvement and it looks so much better as it is more abstract. 
The only other difference in this image compared to the previous one is that the aperture was F/6.5 and the shutter speed was 1/80 sec.

Another element is fire, but I couldn't get the fire large enough to take a photo of it so I decided on taking photo of the ashes instead. I feel this improved the original idea as it takes longer to realise what it is so I create an abstract image. 
I used an aperture of F/9 and a shutter speed of 1/100 sec because I needed to allow a lot of light through the lens while keeping a narrow depth of field to show the detail. 
I would improve this image by ensuring the brown areas around the edges are not on show as they are distracting, and by making it a bit darker as the brightness of the sun made the image look too light.

The final element is water and I couldn't get too close to water as it went out of focus. Therefore, I decided on pouring water out and taking photos of that, which is a problem because it doesn't make it look that abstract. 
I used an aperture of F/13 and a shutter speed of 1/125 sec because I needed the natural light to hit it so it wasn't too dark, and I needed a narrow depth of field to show the water clearly. 
I would improve this image by getting closer to the pouring water. I didn't do this originally because I had no one to hold it for me and it would have been difficult to do so alone.