Happy Saturday, my Darling,
I've been running all over the place this morn, taking Kobedog to the groomer, shopping at many stores, to the Libe. But now I am home, and I'm all done for the next week. Yippee! Right now I'm putting groceries away, checking college football scores. Badgers are holding off Minnesota at the moment. UCLA later in the afternoon. When I am done straightening up the pad, I am gonna relax for a while and unwind the mind.
I trust you are having a nice afternoon. I see it's pretty chilly in Middleton (weather.com), but I bet it's beautiful, too. So, I will be here most of the afternoon, then about 5pm I will do half my walk, just so I won't have to do it all at once tonight.
I Love You! xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
5:45pm : Yeah , Sweet Baby! Badgers took 'em. I see you guys have a rivalry with Minnesota, and I suppose that's to be expected. It's funny because Pearl is from Minnesota, and she went to the University of Minnesota, haha. She is always getting alumni fundraiser letters from them. She still has a trace of a Minnesota accent, too, even though she's been out here for 60 years. Anyhow, good job, Badgers! (even though they didn't cover the point spread, but no biggie. They've scored me a lot of points this season). And now, to see how UCLA is doing...........
back in a bit. :):)
8:30pm : By artifical lighting, I assume you mean some kind of studio lighting? You got a nice soft quality, no shadows. Did you go all the way and use screens or anything? Also, that is a beautiful doggie! Is he or she yours? When I was in photo class, my teacher took about two weeks out of the semester to devote to artificial lighting and studio portraiture. There was a lighting style he taught us, when photographing a person this way, in which you tried to achieve a soft look, with a triangle of light under one eye. I guess it was supposed to be a classic Hollywood portrait style. The school had a 4 X 5 portrait camera, and we had to set up our own lights. I still have the portrait I took, of my (then) best friend's sister. It came out pretty good, I think I got a "B" on it.
You got a nice soft balance in the dog's face, and a faint blend into the background. I'd be interested to know what all you were using. I think we used three lights - one direct, one overhead and one to the side, for that "triangle". A couple students were really good at that type of photography and wound up with magazines. I was always best outdoors or at concerts.
Keep shooting and experimenting with your lights, I will be interested to see what you come up with!
(gonna finish my walk in a minute, back at usual time) :):)
11:15pm : While I was out on my walk, I was trying to think of the famous portrait photographer from Hollywood during the 30s and 40s, and when I got back I remembered him : George Hurrell. He was a master of glamour portraits, and no matter what type of indoor photography you are doing, if you are using artificial lighting, it is worth taking a look at his pictures. You can Google him if you want. I think a lot of it, besides knowing the equipment, is just trial and error. Lighting placement, like microphone placement in recording, is a big part of the end result. It's like when you're a kid, every kid knows that if you turn out the lights and put a flashlight under your chin, you get "Monster" lighting.
When I was about seven or eight, there was a show on TV called "The Invaders". It was one of the first - or maybe the first - show about aliens - but the thing was, that when they died, the aliens would turn red, then vanish. This led to another invention by Kids With Flashlights. We discovered that if you shone a bright flashlight (new batteries!) through the webbing of your fingers, you could make your hand look red, just like The Invaders!
Now, kids and flashlights have little to do with studio photography, but I mention all this just to encourage you to experiment with your lighting - it's placement, intensity, refraction. Hey! I just thought of something, and that is that you already achieved some neat effects in one of my favorite photos by you, the silhouette called "Praying" that you did last year. So that is the type of experimentation I am talking about.
Try for the professional styles that are seen in magazines and portraits, and also try experimentation.
If, that is, they suit your preferences.
Here is something I just thought of that makes no sense at all in regards to photography, but it's another Kid Experimentation Thing : when we were kids, the Whammo toy company made something called a Superball. It was a small, hard rubber ball made with some special ingredient that caused it to bounce incredibly high when thrown with force against the ground. A Superball was the size of a plum, and if you threw it down hard against the sidewalk, you could bounce it over the roof of your house and into your backyard.
I did that a few times, and then one day I got the idea to go into the hallway of our house, and turn out the lights, and close all the doors to all the bedrooms so that the hallway would be completely dark, and then to throw the Superball off one side of the wall as hard as I could, so that it would rebound very rapidly, and horizontally, parallel to the floor, off the two walls of the hallway. It was really cool, and intense too, because the Superball really bounced off those hallway walls, and made many rebounds before falling to the floor.
But what was even cooler was that about a year later, the Whammo company came out with a glow-in-the-dark Superball. So then, you could do the hallway trick, and stand there in the darkness and watch the luminescent ball bouncing very rapidly between hallway walls. It was awesome. :)
And, it was a form of experimentation in lighting (even though unintentional), but I suppose that is why such a long ago experience came to mind when I was thinking of experimenting with photographic lighting.
Try for the professional standards, to develop technique, but also keep that Kid Style spontaneity in mind. Kids never know what they are gonna think up next, and they will try most anything that they feel is creative.
I think that whatever you do artistically is going to have your stamp on it. You have artistic individuality.
I Love You, Elizabeth. I will see you in the morn........... :):)
Sweet Dreams, Beautiful Lady xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
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