27 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in P52, Playing with Light, Practice
Tags
art, backlighting, fine art, garden, grass, Light, photoaday, Photography, water
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” -Henry Miller
This week has just flown by, I love shooting water droplets on grass and what better way to shoot than by using backlighting, it gives such a magical feel to what could so easily be a very ordinary capture.
20 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in Learning, P52, Playing with Light, Practice
Tags
art, backlighting, blogging101, Light, Photography, portraits
“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
Well I am already on week 6 of my Light project and in this my second week of backlighting I have decided to look at portraits. One thing you must be careful of in general is lens flare. When you are shooting into the light, as you do with backlighting, you may get flare. This occurs when strong light rays go directly into your lens, hit the front element, scatter inside it and cause excessive lens refraction. The quality of the glass and the lens width contribute to the degree of flare. You can use your lens hood to help prevent such flare. Sometimes though flare can be a great advantage. It can dress up a photo, like the one above, which adds warmth and atmosphere.
Todays task for Blogging 101 is “develop a regular feature for your blog.” Which is quite apt considering Friday is the day I have been posting my year long project posts on “light sources”. It mentions creating a menu item or widget to highlight it, well I had this in hand already, so will be making this page live too now.
Until next week……….
13 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in Learning, P52, Playing with Light, Practice
Tags
art, backlighting, blogging101, fine art, flowers, Light, macro, Photography
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. – Walt Whitman
Faded beauty
The next four weeks of my 52 Week project I am concentrating on backlighting and different ways of using it in my photography.
Most guides on photography advise you to shoot with the sun or light source behind you to illuminate your subject from the front. This is in itself good advice which will often produce very good, evenly lit images. However, rules are sometimes there to be broken:-)
Simply put backlighting is when a light source is behind the main subject and you are shooting towards it. While some might find it counterintuitive to shoot into the light, the effects can be quite magical. By having the light behind the subject of the photo, the finer details of an object can be enhanced as well as the capture of some lovely silhouettes and sunbursts. Landscape photography works well with backlighting, especially with translucent flowers and foliage or rim lighting of objects in the background. Even atmospheric elements for example fog or steam can be intensified and therefore alter the mood of an image immensely.
To get the correct exposure it is best to use either Spot or Partial metering, which allows you to take a very specific meter reading directly from the main subject.
The top photo was taken in my kitchen looking out towards the bright sunshine coming in through my conservatory windows, I loved the way the details on the Orchid flower drying out were intensified giving it a very delicate feel and greater texture, more so I think than it would have been if I had shot the photo in the opposite direction (into the darker room inside my house). The photo below was taken at night and I used a torch to illuminate the petals from behind which I think highlights the layered petals quite well. Let me know what you think, do they work?
Shining Crysanthemum
Today’s Blogging 101 prompt was to create a blogroll, as I do not particularly want any more widgets on my sidebar I have decided to create a page of some of the sites I do visit regularly. I will constantly add to these as I know I have left quite a few off. Do you have any photography sites that you visit a lot and find helpful, I would love to hear about them?
06 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in P52, Playing with Light, Practice
Tags
Into the shadows
Skating shadow
My final week of using shadows, the first one to create a mysterious feel and the second one just because……….
In my Blogging101 course today we asked to look at our theme and try out a few different ones so I am off to play now, even though I have only recently looked I thought it might be worth looking again now I have been blogging for a few weeks.
27 Friday Feb 2015
Posted in Children, Learning, P52, Playing with Light
Tags
“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch
Shadow play
Concentration
Shadow boy 🙂
In the shadows
Until next time……………………………………………………….
20 Friday Feb 2015
Posted in Learning, P52, Playing with Light
13 Friday Feb 2015
Posted in Learning, P52, Playing with Light
Tags
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it.
But above all, know light.
Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.”
– George Eastman
The unclimbable stairs
I have a few New Year’s resolutions for 2015 and beyond, the usual get fit to improve my health and go on a diet, both of which I am doing well at so far. A few that are photography related are:
My final aim this year is to shoot for ME, I often try and please others but for once I plan to be selfish and shoot just for me.
Patience is a virtue
I had a little “happy dance” moment a few weeks ago when I stumbled across an interesting collaborative website called Who We Become which is a group of photographers who use themes each week to grow their photographic talent and creativity. The first year of their project 52 started by concentrating on playing with light and learning to master its many dynamic forms, so I thought I would do the same to try and kick my photographic hiatus into touch.
For the next four weeks I will be concentrating on Shadows. I hope tthat by doing these projects for myself and spending several weeks at at time exploring a common overarching themes I will be able to really dig in deep, have fun, and take creative risks.
So what is a shadow? It can be defined as: a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.
The Characteristics of a shadow are:
It’s over there!
Until next time……………………………………….
