The lighting angle

 

For this exercise I used a desk lamp, a light tent to diffuse the light and I had my camera on a tripod. Unfortunately I could not have my camera exactly horizontal as suggested as I was using a light tent to diffuse the light and the light tent had a raised edge at the front. 

I choose a statue of an angel to photograph because of the sculptural nature of it.

The first three photographs were taken with the lamp at the front,  the right, the back and the left of the subject The next three were taken were taken with the light overhead and then slightly in front and then slightly behind the subject.  The last four photos were taken with the light pointing down at a 45 degrees angle, moving the light around the object. Image one with the light in front produced a flat image with little detail. Image two with the light at the right hand side showed a definite shadow at the left hand side.  More detail in the texture of the image was also shown.  Image three with the light at the back produced a silhouette showing shape but no detail.  Image four, taken from the left hand side produced a shadow on the right hand side produced a shadow on the left hand side.  More detail was shown in the subject. The overhead images, five six and seven seemed to be a little flat to me but did show the form well. I think images nine and eleven with the light at a 45 degree angle pointing down produce good detail of the texture of the object.

Over all I think this has been a very useful exercise to show what qualities of an object can be brought out by different lighting conditions. I like image four of the silhouette of the object best because of its striking nature. 

Softening the Light

I took two photographs, one with a naked lamp and one with the object above in a light tent which diffused the light.  I used a single desk lamp pointing overhead for both images and I also used my tripod. I realise I need to buy a remote control for my camera in order to get sharper images.

In the first photograph with the naked lamp used as a light source the shadows and highlights are pronounced.

In the second photograph with the diffused light the image looks much flatter and softer and the shadows are very soft and there is little contrast.

I am not sure which one I prefer as they are so different.  I t has been an interesting exercise to learn how naked and diffused light can produce such different images.
   

Progress in Part Four Light

Now Christmas and New Year are past I can hopefully concentrate on this module.  Because the weather has been quite bad and quite a few exercises call for bright light I will have to do these exercises out of sequence. The indoor photography using photographic lighting will be quite a challenge for me as I'm not used to taking photographs indoors let alone photographing still life objects.