Day 192 – Chain, chain, chain

Another “cheat” day, if you will indulge me. I took this one late last night (so technically it was today somewhere in the U.S.).  Today is going to be terribly busy, what with work and preparing for our trip to Las Vegas tomorrow, and I’m really not sure, no, make that I’m pretty sure I’m not going to have a chance to do any serious shooting today.

We’ll be in Vegas Wednesday through Sunday for The Amaz!ng Meeting. I’ll be taking pictures, but not sure when they’ll get posted. Hopefully I will be able to post every day, but . . .

Day 124 – Back to Basics – Ball, Cube, and Cylinder – Updated

Maybe I’m feeling a little sad that the lighting class is just about over. I was in the first group so my final project was critiqued at tonight’s class. Next Tuesday we will critique the second half of the class and then say our good-byes. I’m not eligible to take the advanced lighting class as I have not taken the color class which at this point is an impossibility since it is only offered during the day (9 – 11:45 am), and there is no way I can leave work for 4 hours a day twice a week to take the class.  Not that my learning will stop. I’ll just have to look elsewhere.

Anyway, our first assignment was to shoot a ball, cube, and cylinder using a single light source.  This assignment was to get us to “see” the light: its intensity, the quality of it, how it falls on objects of different shapes, planes, angles,  etc.

At the time I wrote:

It seems simple enough: shoot a white cube, sphere and cylinder against a white background using a single light source.  Simple, yes. Easy? No!  Here’s the catch: Nothing can bleed into anything else. All planes must be distinct, including the backdrop and the table top.   This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, photographically speaking.

My results at the time were less than stellar, even after hours upon hours over several days of trying to get it right:

Jeff challenged us at the time that if we wanted to, we should re-shoot this assignment, once the class was over, using what we’d learned in the class.  I gave it a shot tonight. It didn’t take me long to get close to what I was looking for.  Not perfect, but not bad for just a few minutes of trying.  I may give this a longer whirl this weekend.

I guess I might have learned something.

08-May-2012: After looking at this last photo again, I’m still not satisfied. Top of the cube and cylinder are too close to the shade of the background. Will. Keep. Trying.

Day 120 – Wine glass illusions

I’d set these two wine glasses on the counter after taking them out of the dishwasher and kind of forgot about them.  I worked on printing most of the day so hadn’t given much thought to my photo of the day. I’d been snapping some photos of the kitties (more shallow depth of field stuff) and happened do walk by the two glasses on the counter. I snapped a quick photo (I love shiny glass) and then noticed something interesting. I could see the second glass through the first one.  Well, one thing led to another   . . .

There are all kinds of optical illusions happening in the various planes of glass.