This week's Deranged theme was so hard I only produced one photo. The biggest challenge this week was trying to create a photo/scene of an ordinary item without making it a product photography. How to give emphasis to an object without overdoing? And how to actually find something ordinary and make it interesting? I wandered around the house in a creativity-induced frenzy picking different stuff to shoot. Making a mess and going from there is my workflow.
The cabinet in our living room is filled with trinkets. Ordinary items; stuff that go unnoticed. There are little Buddha figures, books, keys, incense, and a cool-looking moon lamp we never use — I picked the moon first. With my subject in hand, I defined that I wanted some sort of night scene with shadows. Then came in the books, which made the scene look quite cool already. But there was something missing. I still needed the shadows to create that sort of mystic. Entered the Buddha. The result is a mix of three ordinary items matching to create a temple mood, being the moon the ordinary go sexy.
I like to show the process to create my photos, so here it is: There shouldn't be any light in the room to make the moon glow. However, if the exposure is set to show the moon, all the rest becomes under-exposed. And if the rest is lit, the moon is over-exposed. The secret is to take two different photos and merge on Photoshop, using masks to light the Buddha and create the shadows. It's a bit of work, but the result is well-worth it, in my humble opinion.
Camera: 2013 Nikon D7100 with a 1980's all-manual 50mm f1.8
Extras: Tripod
Photo 1: f4 | 1/3s | ISO 100
Photo 2: f4 | 2s | ISO 200
I hope you have enjoyed this post as much as I did making it.
Cheers