Painterly photos

Every now and then, I come across a photo that looks more like a painting than a photo, and they always fascinate me. I want to make photos like this.

I am not sure what makes them so painting-like, but I guess it's a combination of limited palette, deep focus, very well-laid soft light with details in the shadows yet some really dark areas. This example shows off +Hugh Jackman in this way:

Rocket of flowers

Flowers are so obvious a photographic target that they are difficult to make interesting photos of. These flowers stood at the corner of a building, with the sun just barely peeking around the corner. I had to twist into a very specific position to ensure I got the translucency without having the sun itself hitting the lens and destroying the contrast. It turned out nicely.

POTD 11/5 2010

After a long absence, mostly due to me not shooting anything that I could put here (for reasons of quality and permissions), POTD is back with a sample from todays tulip shoot:



This is the result of the contorted setup shown in the previous post. Of course, I could have snipped the whole thing off and taken it inside for a studio shot, but I don't like to do that. Never the easy way for me... Besides, it would probably have caused a goodly amount of the dust to fall off.

What the picture of the setup doesn't show is how I light it: I bounce the flash right into my little fold-out bounce, using the white side. This gives a large enough lit area compared to the tiny subject that the light is appropriately rounded without being flat, and makes the details stand out clearly. Again, not the easiest way, particularly because the flash has a limited rotation ability. I look forward to having my own studio some day.

Moving the light a little bit around to illuminate the front of the left stem might have made it nicer, or it might have cut the drama down. I really like the yellow-on-deep-purple effect it has right now, it's one of my favorite color combinations.