As I related in an earlier post, I've gotten interested in viewfinder photography. Last week I picked up a Kodak Brownie Reflex camera & bashed together an adapter for my digital camera. I also built a box frame so I can try my hand at shooting some still life setups within a dedicated space where I can control the lighting, change the backdrop, hang various elements, etc.
Next I raided Kym's vintage doll head collection & had a go at shooting under various lighting conditions:
Using a timer on the camera I was able to move around with a hand-held desk lamp to try out different lighting conditions. The last two images were shot with the lamp held further back from the dolls.
I also played around with setting up more elaborate still lifes, with mixed results; I'd like to be able to control the contrast better. In both images I used a hand-held mirror to reflect back into the setup (and to hide the camera):
Finally, I used a small lightbox to illuminate the objects from below, in addition to the hand-held lamp. The last two images were shot with only the bottom-lit lightbox on:
A couple of observations - first, the whole process is not an exact science. I've found that two images shot with the exact same camera settings and under identical lighting conditions can (usually) look vastly different. This may have mostly to do with my clumsiness of understanding the settings on my digital camera. This leads to unpredictable results which is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing. I like mistakes, and I can sure make alot of them. Also, what you get is a mirror image (not a big deal; you can always flip it around in Photoshop. duh), and you get a somewhat blurry (sometimes double-visiony) image, so if you want to incorporate text it needs to be big.
I think this has some potential - I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities, this time giving some thought to the images (it's a no-brainer to be able to take freaky pictures with dolls' heads). Stay tuned...
Using a timer on the camera I was able to move around with a hand-held desk lamp to try out different lighting conditions. The last two images were shot with the lamp held further back from the dolls.
I also played around with setting up more elaborate still lifes, with mixed results; I'd like to be able to control the contrast better. In both images I used a hand-held mirror to reflect back into the setup (and to hide the camera):
Finally, I used a small lightbox to illuminate the objects from below, in addition to the hand-held lamp. The last two images were shot with only the bottom-lit lightbox on:
A couple of observations - first, the whole process is not an exact science. I've found that two images shot with the exact same camera settings and under identical lighting conditions can (usually) look vastly different. This may have mostly to do with my clumsiness of understanding the settings on my digital camera. This leads to unpredictable results which is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing. I like mistakes, and I can sure make alot of them. Also, what you get is a mirror image (not a big deal; you can always flip it around in Photoshop. duh), and you get a somewhat blurry (sometimes double-visiony) image, so if you want to incorporate text it needs to be big.
I think this has some potential - I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities, this time giving some thought to the images (it's a no-brainer to be able to take freaky pictures with dolls' heads). Stay tuned...
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