Shiny surfaces

This exercise was an experiment in photographing shiny surfaces.  I chose a CD to use as my example (and confess to not using a tripod), and first of all photographed without any additional lighting apart from the light coming in through the window:

I then photographed the CD with my table spotlight shining next to the CD - I like the effect the light has had on the colour on the left-hand side:

I then tried making a cone, as per the instructions.  This wasn't enormously successful - the paper and lens reflected into the CD:

I then tried photographing the CD with the paper over the lamp instead:

Finally, I tried photographing the CD at an angle to reduce reflection, first with no additional light and then with the diffused lamp - again, not too succesful as the CD caught the window reflection instead - although I like the colour streak in the bottom picture:

I then experimented a bit with another shiny surface and different kinds of lighting, involving my pink geode, a candle and a table spotlamp:

And then with the ring resting on the CD, with the light shinning directly on it:

I then brought in all the combinations of light, CD, geode, trying to create reflections off the silver ring:

This was however, all playtime, so I then went back to the orginal instructions and photographed the ring inside the cone with the light shinning through the paper:

Concentrating the light

For this exercise, I wrapped some black card around a table spot light, concentrated the light on my objects and took a few trial shots in ambient window light:

I then took my home-made concentrated spot light and my gin and tonic into a dark room and had a bit of fun:

Contrast and shadow fill

Still life shot - naked and diffused - with and without various kinds of reflectors:

Naked no reflector

Diffused no reflector

White card opposite - naked

White card opposite - diffused

White card - closer - naked

White card - closer - diffused

Foil - dull side - naked

Foil - dull side - diffused

Foil - shiny side - naked

Foil - shiny side - diffused

Foil - crumpled - naked

Foil - crumpled - diffused

I couldn't see a vast difference between the shots; the diffused shots are generally warmer with the background card more slightly yellow and the shadows are less harsh, but between the addition of reflectors I couldn't see great differences.  When I looked really closely, I could see that the colours were stronger in the foil reflector and that the crumpled foil reflected darker light.  The colours in the white card shots are stronger also than the colours in the dull side foil shots.  I don't think there was any great benefit though to adding reflectors to this subject matter.

The lighting angle

A still life arrangement photographed from the same position each time, but moving the diffused light source around at the same level and then again at a raised level with one shot with the light directly pointing downwards.  I chose Scotch Bonnets for my round object with relief.  Due to the lack of lighting equipment, and space in my house, the whole thing is a little rudimentary, but successful enough to see the effect of the longer shadows when the light was horizontal and shorter shadows when the light was raised at an angle.  In addition, you can see hardly any shadow with the light pointing directly downwards.  You can also see that when the light is facing towards the camera, a silhouette is formed.

The  best three-dimension shape is formed from the lighting to the side, but slightly raised.  I prefer the pictures with the horizontal lighting though because of the higher contrast and longer shadows.

side/horizontal

side/horizontal

side-facing/horizontal

facing/horizontal

horizontal/side

horizontal/side-facing

above pointing down

raised/side

raised/side

Softening the light

This exercise required two photographs of a still life arrangement, one with a naked lamp and one with a diffused light source:

Naked Lamp

Diffused

Fortunately Tigger the Duck kindly volunteered for the exercise: the images were shot at 800 ISO and f/5.3 aperture on aperture priority using greaseproof paper as the diffuser.  With the naked shot, the shutter speed set itself to 1/45s, but with the diffused shot it stopped down to 1/20s.  The lighting in the naked shot is harsher, deeper colours and stronger shadows, and also more texture.  The lighting in the diffused shot is softer, brighter colours and softer shadows with less texture.  I prefer the naked shot - I imagined the diffuser to be an improvement, but in this case it wasn't.  Perhaps with a portrait of a person it would be though?

Outdoors at night

Night-time project in a city centre with plenty of brightly lit buildings and streets to explore the variety of lighting effects and colour in artificial light.  I had some interesting effects with varying the exposure, but found I had to chose between darkening the sky, retaining detail in the main part of the image or blowing out lights completely.  I got a bit carried away with this, abandoned all thoughts of composition, and snapped away at bright lights where ever I found them!  The photos are loaded in time order, so you can work out my route, the first picture was taken in Carnaby Street at dusk.  I used two different ISO settings: 800 for the most part, and then when it got really dark, I switched to ISO 2000 (aware that this would render the image grainy).  Some of these shots are also blurred- they were taken handheld as I didn't have my tripod with me.  I also took far more than the exercise required....73 to be precise...

ISO 800

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ISO 2000