I’ve just been playing around more with my ultra-simple setup – an ostrich egg on a cardboard box. No distractions, no fancy backgrounds. The first image is just one light – a big fresnel.
This one is two lights (obvious from the highlights on the shell), both aimed to bounce off the backdrop and backlight the shell. I’m not fully satisfied with this one, I’ll try re-shooting it some other ways.
A third take on the theme, this time contrasting the shape and texture of the egg, the box and the fossil. I realize I missed the depth of field on the fossil a little, so the very leading edge is a little soft. Another one for the re-shoot pile.
This is a view I’ve seen a number of times but wasn’t ever sure how to capture it until yesterday. I’ve always had the wrong camera with me, either from the focal length, the aspect ratio, or both, perspective. This is an outtake in the sense that I was doing a model shoot with a friend of mine on the pier of the old C&O Canal bridge that used to cross the Potomac River in Georgetown, so taking this photo was not the purpose of the shoot. This is the view looking straight down at the dock for the boathouse.
Boathouse Dock, Georgetown
I was particularly drawn to the geometry and angles formed by the decking on the boat dock, with the red decking running perpendicular to the unpainted deck, and all the triangles formed by the perspective you have to take to see the scene in the first place. Even the boat, which has a totally different shape and texture to the decking, creates more triangles with its prow, and provides visual tension running the opposite direction so you move your eye around the image.
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