Posts Tagged ‘Highlights’

Photo Observation #5 (Uncorked!)

 

2) Photo taken by Nic Christopher; March 12th, 2011.

3) THEME: One Light Source

4) DESCRIPTION: This photo was taken last year for my mom for mother’s day. I was experimenting with my camera and different lighting positions one day after school, and this is one of the many pictures I came up with that day. Originally, I was photographing the image in a light box with a single LED light shining and a 90 degree vertical angle. As I played around with the lighting of these corks I realized that one, direct light source was most desirable in order to capture all the three dimensionality and texture within each cork. I found that putting one incandescent lamp, hitting the object from a 90 degree horizontal angle gave a very interesting and almost tangible effect to the image.

To me, this image captures the essence of my mother. She is not an alcoholic by any means, she simply enjoys sampling wines from across the world. I chose to use corks as my subject as a way to relate to my mom with the composition; however, I also wanted to make sure I had an interesting subject to photograph. One other thing that is worth noting in this image is the way that the light caches the surfaces of the cylindrical corks. The rounded shape allows the light to blend from high intensity light to dark shadows, smoothly and gradually on each cork. The high and low contrasts help differentiate one cork from another and help show which cork is closest to the light source and so on. The grooves found within the wood catch the light wonderfully, enhancing the small imperfections within each one. The final thing that the lighting does for this photo is that with the one constant color from the one source is able to reflect off each cork and clearly define the subtle differences in color tone of each cork.