My experiments with Light!!

Photography is all about controlling light! How much you have the control on it hat much you will have the control on the result that you get. In the cases where we cannot have the control on the incident light, like when we will be shooting in the open area with a cloudy dull sky where we cannot do much other than praying for good light(!), we will stand helpless! But to shoot certain things the same dull light comes very handy to conduct some experiments and get some good results.

  On a weekend in Hesaraghatta Lake area, it was totally cloudy when we landed and light was very dull! The last day I was planning to spend some time in the experimentation with external light source such as torch! Though I dont have a very bright torch, I had decided with whatever I have. So when I landed there I was in search of a suitable subject on which I can start my experiments! Bingo! Only after a few minutes I found a mashroom with a thin and semitransparent skin! I was delighted! Below are the series of images with the explanation on what I tried to do and what I got. You are the best judge to say which one worked and which one are not!

The below image is a plain as is - without any flash or external light source.

 As I said to me it looks 'plain'! Nothing more than that! 

  So decided to lit the subject from sidewise and held the LED torch from the top left corner and you can see the result below- 

 As this looked interesting I got curious to tryout further. The next attempt was to illuminate the subject completely from sideways. Below is how that looks - 

The soft bluish glow that the LED light created gave a very soothing feeling.

The next attempt was to make the subject backlit! I held the torch such that the semitransparent nature of its skin becomes evident and gives a total different view. Here it is -

 So... the same subject, handled in different ways, depending on light the mood that the image imparts changes from angle to angle! 

  Below is another image where the side of the grass blade was purposefully illuminated using the LED and that gave a different feel to the image.

  Another attempt is below where I used three light sources to illuminate this tiny bud from different angles. One from left, one from right and I used a white paper as diffuser to diffuse the light from the flash. Thanks to my friend Pramod S V who suggested the use of white sheet and thanks to him and Naga who held the torches to make this below image.

..... and here are the equipments that I used to make the above image... :-)

  It was a very good learning for me over the two weekends. This is not anything very new or groundbreaking theory that I discovered! Its just my version of it. Many people have tried this globally and our own Ganesh H S has done some remarkable images using this technique. You can find a related article written by him on this topic HERE.

   One thing that I am learning over the time in photography is we should never hesitate to experiment in the field. 

After all photography is not just about 'taking the images', for me its all about 'making the images'.

Cheers,

Ash