staciewiddifield
Widdifield ETCV Back/side lighting. Staycation - work or play?
1. Portrait mode, tightly cropped in camera. Editing: increased saturation (Lightroom).
2. I organized this to work with very extreme side lighting outside, about 5:30 pm.
3. This was a very valuable assignment for me. I set up the ladder with the ball to try and recreate a situation in which I have to shoot a statue in a public space, that is, to document it. I did this first with the bright sun directly behind my “monument” — it was too blindingly bright, so I moved to the side, creating the effect of extreme side lighting. If this were a statue in a public plaza, I would get the entire monument and the context of the plaza as well as close ups. This shot mimics the close up. My interest in this photo was not about artistic composition but getting the information about the object I need for my work. A problem I have faced is not being able to compensate for the extremely bright daylight and either getting a silhouette or completely washing out the details. Here, the ball could have been turned into a dark form or a flat disk. Using portrait mode I was able to retain the sculptural form, the roundness. This has an effective amount of shadow as opposed to being overexposed (per the photos of the little girl in the book). In this case, I had a fairly shiny surface and got the interesting reflections. I’m usually looking at old stuff, so they are bronze and don’t produce this reflection. But, it made the photo more interesting here. In Lightroom, I increased the saturation to make the sky bluer and the ball more green — it had the added bonus of creating the effect of a cheap color travel brochure. So, I decided to make a virtue from a vice and called it Staycation (ladder- work, beach ball -play).
Widdifield ETCV Back/side lighting. Staycation - work or play?
1. Portrait mode, tightly cropped in camera. Editing: increased saturation (Lightroom).
2. I organized this to work with very extreme side lighting outside, about 5:30 pm.
3. This was a very valuable assignment for me. I set up the ladder with the ball to try and recreate a situation in which I have to shoot a statue in a public space, that is, to document it. I did this first with the bright sun directly behind my “monument” — it was too blindingly bright, so I moved to the side, creating the effect of extreme side lighting. If this were a statue in a public plaza, I would get the entire monument and the context of the plaza as well as close ups. This shot mimics the close up. My interest in this photo was not about artistic composition but getting the information about the object I need for my work. A problem I have faced is not being able to compensate for the extremely bright daylight and either getting a silhouette or completely washing out the details. Here, the ball could have been turned into a dark form or a flat disk. Using portrait mode I was able to retain the sculptural form, the roundness. This has an effective amount of shadow as opposed to being overexposed (per the photos of the little girl in the book). In this case, I had a fairly shiny surface and got the interesting reflections. I’m usually looking at old stuff, so they are bronze and don’t produce this reflection. But, it made the photo more interesting here. In Lightroom, I increased the saturation to make the sky bluer and the ball more green — it had the added bonus of creating the effect of a cheap color travel brochure. So, I decided to make a virtue from a vice and called it Staycation (ladder- work, beach ball -play).