Right, I've decided to do something completely different for this theme (spiky). I didn't have particularly wonderful ideas and with a busy rest-of-week, my ability to shoot was limited to a slightly elongated lunchbreak today. I wanted to have a play with reflections and lighting. I care less about whether the image is particularly compelling but I wanted to experiment with reflective surfaces and angles of illumination etc.
So, I decided to arrange a shiny fork (the spiky thing) on a blackened glass surface with a bubble (the thing about to get "spiked"). So time to make some bubbles which will last (no glycerin so gelatin and sugar had to be deployed instead) and get playing...
First of all, I didn't really have the right surface but needs must, so my black background plus a plate glass surface from a table should do. It had a metal thingy stuck to it in each corner, but that can be shopped out
I noticed that the depth of the plate glass was giving me multiple reflections and whilst that didn't result in a clean image, it led to quite an interesting one for this study.
Finally, my biggest experiment would be to combine dark field lighting to illuminate the edges of the bubble with a more conventional light illuminating the inside of the fork. The combined effect is interesting and I think I'd like to play more with glass lighting (aka dark field and light field) and combining it with additional accents etc. I guess this particular scene was about as tough as I could make things with the mixture of a glass-like object and the metal fork. Still, I'm learning lighting as I go so I have to push myself out of my comfort zone all the time. A bit more on dark and light field lighting is here, although I learned it from Light Science and Magic (a super book on lighting basics):
http://www.diyphotography.net/crossing-over-to-the-dark-field-has-never-been-easier/
The overall end image is one which I'm reasonably happy with but happy to concede it will never be a "wall hanger". The multiple reflections, rather than a single harder reflection probably don't work perfectly, but the thick glass was all I had to hand in the limited time. A proper black marble surface would obviously be better.
Is it on theme? I worry less about it, but I can confirm the fork is definitely spiky enough to burst the bubbles (having done a few attempts and got a bit too close on one occasion). Also worth noting that gelatine makes wonderful bubbles as they are still there some hours after making them!!
It was really good fun to do and messing around with lighting angles etc. was enjoyable, as was getting the dark field setup just right. It's still not quite perfect (there's a touch of light spill at the top of the image, although I quite like it) but I do think combining dark field (or light field) with other techniques is always going to lead to compromises - at least given the limits of my knowledge.
Hopefully you've enjoyed looking and reading and I'm happy to share setup info etc. if anyone's keen to know more. I did clean up the image in post - made the glass a bit blacker etc., but for a change I was actually quite happy with SOOC as a starting point.
Cheers
Week 10: Spiky by
Paul M, on Flickr