I have heard the argument on whether we as photographers create beauty, or simply capture it. I think it's just semantics.
Up to this point, I've only captured. I saw something in the world that I liked the way it looked, the way the light fell on it, and I carefully framed that, bottled it up and showed it to you as a series of ones and zeroes. If a subject's light wasn't perfect, I either over exposed and then burned out what didn't need to be there. This to me although a form of artistic expression, is sort of just capturing.
Strobist has set me free.
The power of small flashes is that I am not bound to the restrictions I once faced when it came to natural lighting... Shooting in broad daylight so that I can pull the aperture to a reasonable level, trying to barely contain the highlights as I seek to at least get the thing completely in focus. It brings a brand new set of challenges and complexities surely, but it's worth it in the long run. Now I'm creating.
For this shot, I saw a subject I wanted to capture, and a setting in which to put it. That's two out of the three needed components for a good photo. The third is light, and I luckily brought enough of that in my bag.
The two light setup I'm favoring these days is a mixture of what I've learned over the last few mistakes. I usually put a diffuser dome on the fill light (in this case a SB-600), and place it far back enough so that it in some way cancels out the shadow the key throws on the background. I've been shooting antiques, so I like the grime and character that the years have given the object. To really bring this out, I'll shoot with my SB-900 zoomed all the way to 200. For this shot, because of the glass pane's reflectivity, I shot the zoomed SB-900 through a diffuser which I held with one hand while I shot the camera using a remote. I did check, even though the light was shot through the diffuser, there was a slight change between zoomed to 200mm and zoomed out. I liked it zoomed in. As usual, I threw a gel on there, to change up the color a bit. I think no matter which color shift I choose in raw, adding a hot/cool contrast helps the feel of depth in the image. I then composed, and shot a few until I got one I liked. I then dodged and burned, and did my usual Aperture magic. I hope you like the result, please comment your thoughts.
Always Better Viewed Large On Black
