The shadows photo session part 1

Michelle and I have done several photo sessions, each one more interesting and fun than the last. She had seen some interesting black and white images and wondered if she and I could use them as inspiration for our own take. I showed her some similar ones that I had seen along the way, and we were off to the races. 

I set things up downstairs, almost like it was going to be a dark room. One of the studio lights was aimed at the ceiling for some diffuse light, and I used a small halogen light to create the shadows. We intentionally aimed for contrasty images, lots of shadows and texture, with a bit of brightly lit area. These are intended to somewhat abstract images. For the camera geeks following along, I'm using an f2.8 or f1.8 lens, mostly wide open or nearly so, and having to manually focus, which I don't do a lot of. For the non camera geeks, this means a shallow depth of field, and in some of the images the focus might look a little soft.

If you start to wonder what you're looking at, then we've succeeded. Enjoy. I'm planning to break this up into 3 posts, each linked together once complete so it's easy to follow along. 

1. Getting warmed up and finding the light and shadows.

2.

3. Starting to dive in, looking for interesting shadows and textures.

4.

5.

6.

7. No, I haven't forgotten about the hands project, I've just been distracted by other things.

8.

9.

10. This is Michelle's number one favourite. 

In other news the great photo review and purge is still going on. Working my way through 2019 now, which started with just over 50,000 photos. So far I've deleted about 8,000. A reader asked about this process. No, this isn't a re-review of images. This is looking for out of focus, or unintentionally badly over or under exposed, or where I can see that I've edited one in a sequence, and there are several others essentially the same. I check to make sure I'm not deleting anything that I've actually edited, even if it is an over baked Photomatix monstrosity. And in some cases, like the steam punk museum on Oamaru New Zealand it's exactly the right effect. Here, in case you don't remember.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago This is actually New Years Day 2019. I found it during the great purge. 

Flower

Landscape