Backgrounds and light

No blog last week?  Two words.  Jury duty.  This week, I was given the wonderful opportunity to photograph our friends' beautiful gardens.  More on that later, but the process brought me back to our vegetables, particularly a number of varieties of lettuce.  The colors and veins spreading from the main ribs across the leaves like arroyos across the land always lead to my camera.

What would be the best background to capture the intricate structure?  Is the "front" or the "back" of the leaf more interesting or is each simply different?  

I began with a linen background thinking it would give more of a "botanical print" look.  Lighting was furnished by nature from the southern exposure as well as a fill disc to bounce light on to the top of the leaf. 

Then, I held up a leaf to the sky, with white clouds.  This might work!

More back lighting reveals structure

The subjects then became lunch!

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

 

Backgrounds

In my life-long quest to become a better and more dynamic photographer, I not only have an insatiable appetite for looking at and reading about photography, but I frequently experiment with different elements in order to learn by doing.  The process or the journey helps me really focus on the whole image rather than being a quick draw photographer.

This week, I was pondering backgrounds and how the colors and textures of the backgrounds, as well as the light falling on them, add to the final image.  Pulling out different fabrics, plants, and food items and shooting a small seed head from a Western salsify, also known as goatsbeard (tragopogon dubius), I realized again how much blue is in basic black, how much yellow can be in what my eye perceives as white, and how all the surrounding surfaces add hues to the final product.  This is particularly true in color photography but as you can see in the photographs below, it is also true when the images are layered with a tone.

The backdrop here is a charcoal grey wool vest, and the way the tangle of fibers pop is astonishing.

The backdrop here is a batch of warm, dark roasted coffee beans.  You can see, even with tone applied, that there is a lot of yellow present.

And this was the most lovely accident.  I was preparing other back drops and noticed the light and reflection of the goatsbeard I had just placed on a granite tabletop.  The photograph also makes an interesting study when the image is turned ninety degrees to create a vertical.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image