Replies to two commenters: On Jan 2, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Mark Harris wrote:
Yoram Gelman - Garage Shadows II A beautiful abstract composition here, Yoram. I like the tonality as well as the sofness of the shadows. I am curious if this was a long exposure or soft light, or both, that gave you this effect?
I'd like to take credit for being a super photographer who knew exactly what to do -- but in truth here is what happened. While driving down our driveway (we're on a steep hill) I saw the low setting sun making shadows on our garage wall. I stopped the car (confusing my wife!), jumped to the back, took out my camera, and snapped a couple of shots before the sun went over the horizon. Luckily, my camera was set at a reasonable iso=400 with aperture set to f/4; the shutter speed adjusted to 1/15 so maybe there was a little hand shaking. But that was it.
The qualities you mention were all there, on the wall. Color came from the sun and the garage. There is no detail in the darks because it is all shadow. The softness is mostly due to the combination of small objects and large distance between objects and wall -- about ten to fifteen feet -- so objects could only block part of the sun while the rest of the sun illuminated the wall on either side of the shadow. I imagine there are edge diffraction effects as well. Most of the post production I did was to crop and to clone out some wall features.
I'm glad you like it. On Jan 2, 2011, at 6:39 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
Yoram Gelman -- Garage Shadows II -- I'm not sure it works as well as a photo as it probably did in person. The fact that it looks so much like an actual silhouette, but isn't, is more striking when what it really is is directly in front of your eyes, I suspect.
But in fact, it IS a silhouette. And for me, looking at the image brings up a rush of gratitude. Because shadows don't usually reveal themselves in that way. I have now started noticing shadows much more, in somewhat of a detailed way, although in truth it sort of started when I took the photo of an iron structure and its shadow near the top of a building (in our gallery a few months back).
But you're right about the real thing being more impressive . . . the original was twice as wide and equally interesting. But I had to crop out many extraneous artifacts.
Thanks for both your comments. -yoram
