Depth and Light

Exploring even further the concept of using shallow depth-of-focus and common photography lighting techniques, I came up with the idea of practicing different lighting angles last night. I also have wanted to try out different lighting angles with one flash without blinding someone. So, I noticed that my wife had put the statue of Our Lady we bought for our joint Christmas present shortly after we were first married on the bookshelf in our living room, and so I used her as my subject.

Since I still had my PK-13 attached to my 50mm f/1.4 and my D1H, and I thought this would make for some interesting study. See, the total size of the frame I was working with here was about 3" by 3" give or take a few millimeters. Obviously my typing paper snoot would light the heck out of the whole thing, so I needed some much narrower light. So, I grabbed my ball-bungeed-to-hold-the-batteries-in SB-28 (attached via SC-17, since I don't have my radio remotes yet) and rubber-banded the DIY grid spot snoot to REALLY control where the light was landing on each shot. It was a little tricky getting what I wanted in focus (since I wasn't using a tripod and I was working in the extreme macro world) and moving the flash so it would light the part of the statue I wanted to light with the shot. It almost felt like I was a marionette dancer standing there in front of the bookshelf with my SB-28 and my D1H, with the SC-17 as my string.

I took the liberty to give some different tonality, too, to these images because I thought it explored a different mood to the scenes. Here are the results -- I love how the depth is extremely exaggerated by the limited focus combined with the lighting. And, the master craftsman who carved this resin statue has just done an amazing job with the details:

Finally, Something Other Than a Leaf!

While I haven't posted much around here lately, I'm still formulating the philosophy. Of course, one person doesn't make for a group, really, so it's no wonder things aren't hoppin' at this joint.

Still, I've been playing around with a few ideas, and learning how to use lighting and flash, thanks to a tip from Tim that I go check out Strobist. Interestingly, the lighting techniques on Strobist can very likely work out well with the Group F/1 philosophy under development here. In this image below, I'm experimenting with both. I'm becoming a firm believer that extremely narrow depth-of-focus can certainly convey a sense of depth -- especially in the macro world. Of course, I could probably use lighting techniques to convey this sense of depth a little differently and keep everything in focus. But I believe that highlighting certain features through selective focus can make for an interesting perspective. If it's done "correctly" (whatever that means), and with (as I've mentioned before as important), clear intent. Here's a link to the "straight" version of this shot and here's the Group F/1 version of the Moth shot: