What the heck was I thinking?

I'm conducting an online class right now, critiquing photographs, and one student, Dennis, posted a photo where I thought the light was too flat and weird and there wasn't any texture in some wooden elements. It reminded me of some of the initial photos I took with my very first digital SLR back in January of 2004. I tweaked Dennis's photo to help illustrate what I was talking about and then tweaked this photo, which looked similar (in lighting) to his picture.

Back in 2004 I put a wooden spoon on a red silk scarf, put something black behind it, and then, either using a flashlight or candlelight, I photographed the spoon. The top photo is my original image, which I thought was rather cool at the time.

Today, older and wiser, I brought that same photo into Photoshop and applied a Topaz Adjust 5 effect called "Detail Strong" to the photo. Using a layer mask, I allowed the effect to come through on the wooden spoon only, not on the scarf. Why? Because I wanted texture to show on the spoon, not the fabric. You see the effect in the second picture.

But it's still too yellow (due to the bizarre lighting I used), so I desaturated the yellow color in the picture (using an adjustment layer) and then applied the Topaz Adjust effect "Detail Strong" to just the spoon. This looks (to me) more natural.

As for the red silk scarf the spoon's sitting on? Well, that's just weird! Dramatic, but weird!

©Carol Leigh, eight years older but not nearly as wise as I should be . . .

Summer Light and Shadow

Right now, here in the northern hemisphere it's full-blown summer, which usually means lots of sunshine, lots of light, and lots of shadows. Got shutters? Got mini-blinds? Look at how early morning or late afternoon light pours in through the windows, the blinds/shutters creating dramatic shadows. When you see that light, those shadows, find SOMEthing, ANYthing to put in that light.

Your light may be fleeting, so you'll have to act fast. Here you see two photos I took in my kitchen a couple of years ago. I quickly hung a straw hat on a cabinet knob to create a summer-esque photo. And then opened another cupboard just to see what was there that I could use as a subject in the sunlight. A bag of coffee and a canister in the back was what I could find and shoot before the sun dipped behind the offshore fogbank and was gone.

If I could paint, the subject matter of a straw hat and bright, stripey light/shadow would be a wonderful composition to attempt.

Ordinary subjects in extraordinary light. That's what we're looking for!

©Carol Leigh, always happy to see light here on the Oregon coast