I am now more than halfway though the class at Photo Center NW. This past week’s assignment focused less on the technical aspects of photography and more on the creative. I think I may have had the most fun so far with this one. The idea was to use light as the main subject, the source could be natural or artificial. I did a little of both.
With the self-portrait, I was going for a dramatic look with the lighting. So, I placed my off-camera flash above and left of the camera, just a little in front of me. I set the shutter to synch speed (1/200 sec) to get rid of any ambient light, opened up the aperture, and then dialed in the flash power until it gave me this final result. Not a lot of post-production, brought the lights up a little and moved the shadows down a touch. According to a friend who saw this picture, it’s my KGB shot!
The eagle required a little bit more manipulating in post, though not as much as you might think. I shot this with my new 70x300mm lens using a polarizing filter (brings out the blue sky). I really liked the shot in color, but there wasn’t as much “light as subject” as I wanted for this assignment. So, after converting it to monochrome, I almost completely removed all the blue from the mix. That made the clouds that were present a bit more prominent, and darkened the areas that were blue without affecting anything on the eagle itself. So, now light seems to be a bit more of a subject than before. At least that’s what I’m telling myself so I can use it for this assignment.
The rest are a mix of some others that I really liked from the past week.
Where were the whimsical bottles? Love that shot!
There’s a house down on Alki that has a very funky garden. It’s just past all of the shops and restaurants but before you get to the lighthouse.