Macro Monday 41 in a dark box

There's a joke there. Photographers will probably get it, once they see the images, especially if they've taken one of Neil's classes. I'm finally getting around to getting better photos of my paperweights. I have many from several episodes of glassblowing several years ago now. I quite enjoy it, and the results are often beautiful even if not what was intended. 

The problem with trying to photograph spherical glass objects is they will reflect any light into the camera. You end up with a bright spot, or several brights spots, or even reflections of entire scenes like through a window. Even really even light will reflect, and if you make it uniformly even, the white light will drown out the interior colour, and coloured glass is so beautiful that it's a shame to do that.

The solution? A dark box, shot in a dark basement at night. You wouldn't think, looking at these photos, that there's lots of darkness involved, but there you are.

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2. This is what I mean by reflections. Dark basement, but still some ambient light creating reflections. can you see the unintended selfie? Michelle might recognize the shirt if she looks really carefully.

3. Once I controlled for the reflections (using several old towels) I got this. Much better.

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7. Lots of people are repulsed by this one when they see it in person, and it looks totally different here.

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9. Some actual macro abstracts. Those first ones are technically macro since I cropped slightly, but these are all at 4 to 5x mag.

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Every now and then I like to reward my readers for commenting. As I've said many time, I love to get comments! It works from mobile devices now, or it did a little while ago. Don't be a stranger.

Janice. One household object a day, to add to the of the day feature. 

An interesting idea. I often look around the house and yard for interesting ways to present common objects, or find or create interesting light to place them in. Perhaps the best example is the kettle that was image of the year for 2017. So far I haven't been big on created shots; sometimes they seem so contrived it makes the photo look fake. Normally I like to take the scene as I find it. I'll have to think about this. Maybe paperweight of the day? Hmmm.

Janice, water drops on the peony. (same image as first comment.)

I'm not sure. Sometimes I get out early enough there is still dew on the flowers. Sometimes it's just rained. And sometimes I'll bring out a spray bottle. It's true. Water drops on flowers in the right light can take a photo from nice to awesome.

Janice, liking 7 and 8 from flowery Friday.

I've been trying to get a nice photo of that yellow begonia, and some nearby orange ones off and on all summer, and have never really liked any of them. The purple dahlia is one of my favourites, and I hope it comes back next year.

Janice, votes for Trump.

I don't get it either. Why some people vote the way they do just baffles me. 

Sean, Harry Callahan, not the dirty one.

I went looking at some of his images, and I can see why my photo reminded you of them. I'll take it as a compliment.

Sean, writing.

I've been stuck for a while. I had a branch piece that shows two of the important characters developing their friendship, and that was good, some of those changes rippled out into the rest of it. Which also made one chunk where I was trying to do too much, totally obsolete, except one little bit I quite liked, but doesn't work on it's own, and the time is now wrong. I find that if I'm doing lots of writing at work, it drains me for writing at home. No surprise there, I guess.

Sean, November image of the month, Nighthawk. (Same as the Callahan link.)

I finally got one of your references without looking it up! Yay me! That image is certainly in the running for image of the year.

Janice, a collection that gave her ideas.

I'm really happy to hear that some of my odd images give other photographers ideas. I often look at other work and think about how they did the image and how I would have done it. For landscapes or skylines where I'm familiar, I try to figure out where it was taken. Love to watch what other photographers shoot, and there's been a bunch of times where I got interested in something that I didn't think would be interesting. Then again, when I see a bunch of people shooting one thing, I won't, I'll turn around and look elsewhere for something interesting.

Sean, several comments re: visual space, or other more advanced visual art concepts.

I love reading these, and go back to the published image to think about it. Where I've cropped to get that image, I'll go back to the original image, and think about why I cropped that way. Often I didn't get a lot of choice. There's something else in that image that I didn't want in the finished image. Other than panoramas, I'm not fond of odd image ratios. 

Going on about ratios. My original camera ratio is 3x2, though I can set others. I often crop people shots to 10x8, and landscapes to 16x9. I'll sometimes look at 1.618x1 and alternates to the thirds lines if the image works that way, and sometimes I'll see that ratio and shoot it that way. Going to 1x1 is an unusual choice. Flower shots often have something in the background I don't want, another flower, a water barrel, a supporting rod, and cropping helps get rid of that. I'll put the edge of a petal at the edge of the frame, and while some visual artists (many?, most? all but me?) see that as creating a tension, I don't feel that tension. 

Which leads to another of the photography rules "fill the frame." Which I tend to, overflowing in many cases. I once tried to create a megapixel image of a dahlia, and Lightroom refused to assemble it. Now that I've added computer memory I should try to find those and see if it was a memory issue, or I goofed getting the shots.

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