Light II

Some more lighting situations . . .

High contrast sun and shadow.

Diffused light through a screen door. This is a merged image made from two shots, one focused on the door, and the second focused on the people outside then manipulated in Photoshop CS4.

This image is high contrast but boosted front light with a SB-900 flash.

Depth of Field

The Nikon 105mm lens, creates a narrow depth of field, generally depth of field is inversely proportional to focal length of a lens. For any given focal length, the depth of field varies directly with the aperture selected. That is, the wider the aperture (e.g. f2.8) the shallower the depth of field. If you use f22 you can maximize depth of field (the width of the focus area in sharp focus). Most lenses are considered to be at its sharpest at about 2 or 3 stops down from widest aperture, that is at f5.6 or f8, so you sacrifice sharpness if you maximize depth of field. Also pleasing bokeh (blurring of the background) is also effected as you widen aperture say to f-stop number f2.8 in a fast lens.

In this image of Hermione's eye you can see the band of sharp focus, the depth of Field (DOF)

D300, ISO 200, f 3.3 1/500 sec.

I have darkened the image so you can see this more pronounced. Interesting heh?

Light

We see things using light, light is all our eyes can really see. Visible light appears to be colourless or white and although we can see this light, white is not considered to be part of the visible spectrum because white light is not the light of a single color, or frequency. It is made up of many color frequencies which is why when sunlight passes through a glass of water and lands on a wall you see a rainbow. If you shine the colours red, green and blue in a light and them overlap, you will see magenta. Mixing light where red and green light overlap, you will see yellow. Where green and blue light overlap, you will see cyan. You will notice that white light can be made by various combinations, such as yellow with blue, magenta with green, cyan with red, and by mixing all of the colors together.

Most colour we see is reflected light, like paint or dye molecules that absorb specific frequencies of light and bounce back, or reflect, other frequencies to your eye. The reflected frequency is the color of the object. There are some rules for light, for instance light travels in a straight line, the farther you are from a light source, the dimmer the light and the angle that a light hits a surface (the angle of incidence) is the same as the angle the light bounces off the surface (the angle of refraction).

The larger and closer the light source the softer the light and the further away the light the harder the light, it will have stark shadows. The character and quality of a photograph can be altered by the character and quality of light, so you need to think about how a scene should be lit, what lighting angles get good results, and what exposure settings will bring out the best detail and shading. A hard light (the light source is further away) will generate dark shadows and the direction of the light can place shadows in unattractive positions of a subject. One solution is to diffuse the light. Diffused light is softer and does not cast strong shadows. An overcast day is perfect for a lot of photography for this reason, the sunlight is diffused by clouds. the down side being that a white sky makes a very ordinary photographic backdrop.

Just to lighten the mood :-)

A couple More

Here is a couple more statues I snapped at Waverly Cemetery in Bronte, Sydney NSW where we looked for some relatives. None found, the real estate was too expensive for working class Irish catholics :-)

What about this for an inscription:

Since it falls unto my lot, that you should rise and I should not,
fill to me the parting glass, gently rise and softly call,
Goodbye and joy be to you all.

Crook as Rookwood

I was looking for a grave of Annie Elizabeth Tollis (Nee Wright) with my mum, its her grandmother and she was supposed to be buried at Rookwood Cemetery.

Rookwood Cemetery has been putting people in the ground since 1867, over 600,000 are down there, and it's one of the largest cemeteries in Australia.

Rookwood Cemetery is located in Sydney’s West, and covers more than 300 hectares, it contains a war memorial and memorial gardens.

We went to the visitors centre in the Anglican / church of England section (can't help it if my mums side is not proud Irish catholics like my dads) anyway they were extremely helpful.

In less than five minutes based on the name only the very helpful staff looked up the database and found the plot, and plots owned by the deceased and quickly researched any obvious linked burials.

We had a headstone, map to its location and details of all those buried in the plots before we knew it. We found it in the old Anglican section in a grave with two plots and a headstone marked Fredrick William Tollis.

In most cultures people expect to be remembered through headstones that include their names, dates of birth and death, special designs, and other relevant information.

Usually smaller grave headstones are most commonly used to mark individual graves these days, but to mark a group of graves or an entire family can take the form of elaborately designed statues that celebrate a specific theme, this is one of the oldest forms of funerary art.

Originally, a tombstone was the stone lid of a stone coffin, or the coffin itself, and a gravestone was the stone slab that was laid over a grave. Now all three terms are also used for markers placed at the head of the grave. Originally graves in the 1700's also contained footstones to demarcate the foot end of the grave.

Since gravestones and a plot in a cemetery can cost significant amounts of money, they are also a symbol of wealth or prominence in a community. (source: Wikipedia)

A spooky inscription:

Remember me as you pass by,

As you are now, so once was I,

As I am now, so you will be,

Prepare for death and follow me.

Creepy huh?