Week 13 – Shadows
Info
Today’s photo is a sort of a light experiment. Set-up is fairly easy, just one light, however, the number of possibilities is endless.
The overall concept meant to show sadness and the lighting was meant to enhance it even more. Sadness, loneliness. Not that I feel those so much. It’s more of an exploration, understanding and empathy.
I encouraged you to express your feeling about sadness and loneliness. I will repeat once again to be clear, this photo is not about showing my loneliness, but to express my empathy.
I have felt negative feelings a lot in my short life. It’s not because I lead a poor life, or that I don’t fulfill my dreams. Actually, I think I’m quite happy when it comes to realizing my goals. I study what I wanted to study, I do what I like doing and I have a bunch of friends that support me.
The problem lies deeper and comes from my emotionality (I haven’t planned to be so personal in today’s post but one time won’t hurt, would it?).
So being honest, I don’t have much more pain than anyone else, I just experience it so much. Actually, it’s one of the main reasons I decided to become an artist. Successfully or not it’s up to you to decide. For me, the important thing is the possibility to express my feelings, to express my thoughts and experiences.
Tech
Technique was fairly easy. I used one strobe from the right. It was set at 70mm and 1/8th power (SB-24) at around 2-3 meters from the right.
The I played with window-shutters (jalousie), have tried like 2 dozen different settings before I got the right look. You can observe different look of shadows in the additional photos below.
It’s all a game of light and shadow. So play it! Try it yourself. One thing that I can add: wide and long shutters help a lot. I used very thin and short ones, it was a pain…
Other Shots
What are your feelings? Leave your thoughts in comments.
11 Comments
Keep the awesome work Marcin!
I really like this image, but I think making the images more contrasty and using a curve to reduce the white values to a light gray would make them pop more.
Like this: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_zZ4zXBYETRg/S7qvKy7F5KI/AAAAAAAAGFk/Kc8NT5lGF5A/week13s.jpg
Reducing white to gray is exact opposite of “contrasty” so I don’t quite understand what you mean.
nice use of shadows and lines!
Thanks Joshi
Step one of the process is an increase in contrast to reduce the difference between blacks and whites.
Increasing contrast removes gray tones, essentially speaking. It also enlarges the area that pure blacks and whites take up, which makes the curve adjustment (grayness) more pronounced.
In other words, while the overall effect is a reduction of contrast, the beginning step is actually an increase in contrast.
B/W darkroom work will do wonders for your post-processing technique.
My black and white workflow is doing fine.
I understand your steps, however, i don’t understand your result, it’s completely flat.
great stuff. certainly a very evocative piece.
as for sadness, i take my advice from gibran:
“and is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives?”
i certainly don’t go with the stereotypical ‘tragic artist’ image prevalent in society, but over the years as an art student i have come to realize, and grudgingly admit, that sadness is an integral part of being an artist. you don’t feel especially contemplative when you’re happy-go-lucky all the time.
I’m captivated by black and white images. They’re powerful for expressing emotion and conveying the desired message. I love the lighting effect and can feel genuine emotion in these pictures. My father was a professional photographer, and I try to carry on the tradition as well as I can.
@supriya well said, well said… you should read my piece about Munch, there’s a bit about that;)
@Andrea Thanks a lot. Yea, black and white has that interesting feel, colors can be often distracting, while b/w is more pure at it’s message.
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