Friday, February 5, 2010

The Glass



One of our assignments in Advanced Studio Lighting is to show motion, ie, blur.  The rule of thumb is either to use a lot or a little.  With a lot of motion blur, the image you get is almost entirely abstract.   For me the most difficult shot to pull off is subtle motion.  This was my attempt. The more I look at this image, the more I like it.  I was actually inspired to try this by our session of dragging the shutter last night in the studio...


Nikon D3s and 24-70mm zoom lens.


- Vince Hemingson
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 5, 2010 at 12:54 AM

    How did you get both the foreground and the background in such sharp focus and your model only partially blurred?

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  2. Vince HemingsonFebruary 5, 2010 at 10:52 AM

    It's a six second exposure at f/16, ISO 1600. The 24-70mm was at 45mm. That choice gives me pretty decent depth of field. I ended up cropping off both ends of the frame as rather uninteresting. The crazy part? The light source was two candles, one on either end of the table. That's it. Two candles. The highlights in the shot started to blow out at eight seconds!

    But the two candles gave me the reflection I was looking for in the glass itself. The shot required that I move the candles around quite a bit to accurately assess how much light they threw off (thirty exposures to be exact). The black and white contrast between the model and the backdrop was also a bit of challenge, but I was after a 'period' look that evoked an artist's studio in Paris (I have an affection for most things French and Paris in particular). I have always like the sketches of Mona Shafer Edwards:

    http://www.globalgallery.com/search.php?af=mona+shafer+edwards

    So I guess this is my homage to Brigitte, Odile, Delphine and Madeleine.

    What looks like shutter drag on the edge of the corset is actually the slight movement of the model. From breathing...

    The idea behind this shot is that the model's lovely stocking-clad legs are reminiscent of the stem of the champagne glass, and her shapely torso is an echo of the champagne flute itself. The slight swaying and out of focus quality of her body in contrast to the focus of the glass is an allusion to the effects of the champagne she is drinking. Quite intoxicating...

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  3. RicoFebruary 7, 2010 at 5:33 PM

    Hi Vince,

    I really like this shot... the placement of the glass within the frame relative to the models leg... it creates a nice focus point which draws you up the model's leg to her torso. Great job! Rico.

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