Friday, November 20, 2020

A new favourite

 If you've been following along you'll know I figured out a better way of taking photos of my paperweights. This is the fun thing about photography, you're never really sure of what you're going to get on screen until you get there. No matter how much care you take setting up the shot just so, sometimes it doesn't quite work out. 

Without going into too much detail, the fundamental problem is that our brains see the world differently than a camera does. That's why some scenes look flat, or a pretty model isn't photogenic, or what is bland to our eyes is wow to a camera.

To the eye in normal light, this paperweight is dark and dull. The detail is all but invisible. And yet, light it correctly and you get wow. More of the the shots from this session will show up in the of the day feature, and maybe I'll talk about why spherical is hard.


While I was at it, I put that paperweight under the macro lens. I thought there would be lots to look at, and I ended up disappointed. This is one of the cases where things didn't work out, not even for one of the abstract colour images I've sometimes posted. Oh well. None the less, I enjoyed sitting in a dark room, gradually rotating the paperweight, looking at it with the camera and my eyes.

Sometimes the camera and software tell you interesting things about an image. This one, for example. Most people look and think, ho-hum. No blossom. No pretty model. No bright colours. A photographer paying attention will note the aspect ratio is subtly different, and there's a relationship between that ratio the curve of the rose bush and the arc of snow. And that the start of that curve is a leaf with snow on it in the lower left corner. Da Vinci and the ancient Greeks would approve. I smiled during the entire editing process.


Of the Day
Driftwood

Celina, getting the attention she feels she deserves.


Paperweight (a different one)
I'm going to have to work on this one more. While I was making it, my instructor looked, and asked if worked in a hurricane, it was so big, and squat. And dark dark blue. 






1 comment:

  1. Nice echo of line in 2 but I don't think the rightmost 25% helps you. You and I have spoken before about the square format. The Celina image would work as well as a square because you could keep the subject (cat and hands) without the unnecessary information of the arm (right) and quilt (left). Cheers, Sean

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