Project 6: Photography II Light Exercise 5: Artificial light

Whereas the previous exercise looked at the different qualities of daylight, this one considers artificial light. 

I took a series of photos of small compositions using my macro lens and a table-mounted tripod. Some of the photos are of small ‘message in a bottle’ altered art pieces that came from an art swap in which we each created a series of artworks from small medical bottles. Following that, I photographed an award I won in the form of a glass prism. I thought the glass in each of the compositions would be interesting to observe in artificial light because of their transparent yet reflective qualities.

I discovered that manual mode doesn’t work with a macro lens so I used either aperture priority or shutter priority for these shots.

As can be the case with close-up photography, even with a tripod, and especially in low light, some of my images were blurred. I deleted these as the first step in my selection process. 

I used a variety of light sources: two lamps, one at either side of the table, and overhead spotlights. The lamps have candle bulbs and a warm light whereas the overhead lights are the yellowish light of standard ceiling bulbs. I turned each one on and offf so that some photos had light from a single source and others had multiple light sources in different colour temperatures. It was tempting to tone down the warmer hues to make the images look more natural, but I resisted the temptation in order to compare artificial light with daylight.

ISO 640, f5.6, 1/15s

ISO 640, f5.6, 1/4s

This slower exposure brings more light into the frame than in the first image above. This second photo has a softer hue that any of the other prism compositions. It was taken with overhead light rather than the side-lighting lamps. I thought the warmer coloured lamps would give a softer hue than the overhead lights, but apparently not.

ISO 640, f10, 5.0s

ISO640, f11, 5.0s

With these two photos, one f stop makes a noticeable difference. Also, the upper of the two was side lit from the right and the lower one had both lamps on, giving a more even distribution of light.

ISO640, f22, 3.2s

ISO640, f22, 8.0s

The first of these is darker due to the shorter shutter speed. The second one had a very long exposure of 8 seconds and I’m pleased that it retains its sharpness whilst bringing in more light. I do rather like the darker one though, as there seems to be a gleam of treasure to the bottles’ ornamentation that is lost with more light.

ISO640, f3.5, 0.6s

ISO640, f22, 8.0s

These last two images are the sort of photo that I most like to take. I love the sharp detail that is achieved in these larger than life-size images. I have no glaring white spots in either of these images, whereas some of my rejected shots whited out the shell in the upper composition. I like the soft light of the final shot, with its long exposure in low light giving a very different feel from the brightness and harder light that would have been present in a daylight photo. I also like the limited colour pallets of browns, creams and turquoise in these images.