Mirrors

My first roll for Photo II focused on mirrors and reflective objects. I found plenty of both to use as subjects for this roll.

The subject of this first picture is my sister. I had her stand facing the sun and hold the mirror up so we can see the reflection of her face in the mirror, but not her actual face. The background is mostly obscured because of the intense backlighting. This draws more attention to her face in the mirror.

This picture is an example of direct lighting. I used my dad's soprano saxophone as the subject. The body and keys are very reflective and created very hard light under the bright night light that I used here. There is a very short depth-of-field as well, as only a short section of the instrument is in focus.

This last picture was extremely difficult to light correctly. The subject is my sister sitting at a table reflected in the darkened glass doorway to the living room. The glass made a good medium for getting a reflection, but since it was so dark, much of the light was absorbed, making it hard to judge the lighting correctly. I was very pleased with this result.

While the main focus of this roll was mirrors, I also experimented with shiny objects or things that refract light. For this print, I took a wine glass and lit some rubbing alcohol on fire inside the glass. I turned all the lights off to accentuate the effect.

Hand-Colored Print

My first assignment of Photo II was to make a print that shows good composition. I had a lot of negatives to choose from that I developed last semester. I chose this print from the Still Life roll that I shot in early January. This was the first print I developed using fiber paper. There was a lot of white space on the print which made it good for hand-coloring.

Entry #1: Silhouettes

Taking a successful backlit photograph requires going against some basic rules that are normally used to take well-lit pictures. First, it is important that the subject has a well-defined shape that will be easily recognizable against a bright background. An ideal background would be something like a sunset or floodlight. This lights the back of the subject while leaving the front darkened. Use the light meter on the background and adjust the shutter speed and aperture accordingly. This will make the background bright and well-exposed while the subject is dark. Finally, make sure that the subject is in focus. The clear, well-defined shape of the subject adds to the intensity of silhouette photographs. Here are some examples of silhouette photography.

http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/tree-silhouette.shtml 

http://danfingerman.com/wedding/ 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/angeliquephotography/946008469/