I got the camera out over the weekend again. I enjoyed photographing my gold so much for my Moody Metals post, that I thought I would take some more gold photos, but this time focus on using natural light.
All the photos in this post were taken sitting on the verandah at around 10:30am, so the morning light was nice and soft. I hope you enjoy the photos included in this post, I will also give you bits of information about the gold pieces as I go.
The first photo I took while setting up and testing the angle of the light. You can see that I have not even placed the bar correctly for you to read the writing.
All that aside, I just loved the light and clarity of this photo. Let's put this one down as a successful test photo shall we. 😆
For this next photo, I took a little bit more time making sure the setup was correct, all bars right way up, CHECK! As you can see from this photo, the focal point was the front gold bar, but I was trying to create a depth of field with this photo. The transition of the sharpness of the front bar toward the back bar is gradual and there is still an acceptable level of sharpness on the back gold bar.
For those of you who are interested in the props that I have in this photo, the wooden base is a whitewashed side table that my wife worked on as a little furniture refurb project. The pieces of coral were collected from the beach by my children, I found them in a plastic beach bucket sitting the verandah. I love the texture and shadows that the coral adds to the composition of the photo.
I love the effect of this next photo, the rock is another random beach rock picked up during a beach walk. I just love the colour and the strata lines of the rock. In my own imaginative mind, I pictured this rock as gold rich rock and the bars represent the gold vein running through the rock.
Even the groves in the rock worked perfectly for the placement of the gold bars. They look like they are in their natural habitat. The way the sun light caught the gold glow of these bars was very rewarding to look at afterwards on the camera.
Sticking with the rock habitat theme, I decided to bring out one of my special gold sets to photograph. This set is the 2010 Kangaroo in Outback three coin gold proof set by the Royal Australian Mint. Each coin is 1/5oz of .9999 fine gold. They had a very limited mintage of only 1,000 coin sets. The set comes in a beautiful wooden case that you can see placed in the background.
The thing that I love about the coin design of this three coin set is that it depicts the same kangaroo on all three coins at different stages of hopping, as if it has been captured in three separate photographs. I thought it quite appropriate to display this set in the photography post.
If you jump on the imagination train with me again, it looks like the kangaroo is jumping across the rocks... hmmm I probably should have used a rocky wallaby coin design, but oh well.
The next photo moves away from gold for a moment and focuses on another precious metal that is very valuable, but often undervalued by the stacker community. This coin is the inaugural proof platinum koala issued by The Perth Mint as part of a numismatic coin series that went from 1988-2005. The mintage on the 1988 1/2oz platinum koala was limited to only 2,992 pieces. These coins were presented in a Jarrah wooden box, the lid is shown in the photo.
Photographing proof finish coins is often quite challenging due to their mirror finish. You need to position yourself so that the camera or your hand or anything else in the background does not appear in the mirror finish of the coin.
For this particular photo, I love how the light caught the coin, really emphasising the detail in fur of the koala, dimming the mirror background.
I tried a slightly different angle for this next photo and introduced the gold bars back into the picture. Gold and Platinum are good friends, so I thought they could hang out together.
You can see how the light is this photo is completely different on the platinum coin. The koala coin design becomes secondary to the bright glimmer of the mirror finish background.
At this point in the photo shoot I decided to bust out a bunch of different coin designs. In this photo are two 1oz Perth Mint gold cast bars, one 1/2oz platinum proof koala, one $200 Gold Koala, one 1oz American Gold Eagle and one 1oz 2005 Krugerrand.
What I absolutely loved about this photo is the variety in the different colours of the three gold coins in the photo. All three coins are actually .9167 gold which is referred to as 22 carat gold. The remaining 8.33% of the coins are made up of other metals.
In the case of the Krugerrand, all of the remaining 8.33% is copper, that is why it has a more orange tinge in comparison to the other two coins. The American Gold Eagle has 3% silver and 5.33% copper, you can see the difference the 3% silver makes in reducing the orange tinge. I am unsure what the remaining 8.33% of the $200 Gold Koala is make up of, but I do not think it has copper as it has by far the most sheen of the three coins.
Well that unfortunately concludes my Natural Light - Gold Photography post for this evening. I kind of wish I took more photos now, as I was quite enjoying myself sitting here with the music going and my whiskey beside me. Anyway, time to get back to the real world for a while. Catch you all later.
