Assignment 4: Re-shoot - Texture

The second shoot to be discussed is the texture image. Here is the original shoot.

Here is the comment from Alan:

“You have chosen to concentrate on the stippled area of the body of the subject.   In my opinion there is too much strong contrast in this image because the unlit areas in the frame are almost too dense to discern any detail. You have avoided this problem in all your other images by the arrangement of your lighting to fill the shadows. An image which showed some of the areas of brushed aluminium or the carrying strap would have also been quite appropriate for this task.”

So, the problem with this image (according to Alan) is the contrast is too high. It is possible to put a fill light in to reduce the contrast, and bring up some details on the originally unlit area. Let’s try this one first. This image was the one that I took earlier but didn’t select for the assignment. It is on a different orientation, because I prefer the details on the exposure dial instead of the rewinding knob. The idea is the same, one side of the prism area is lit by a hard light to show the texture of the leather, but this one has a fill for the front.

My feeling is: it is a little bit too distracting. There are more things to look at instead of just texture on the leather. It might not be the first thing viewers will pick up on.

Personally I prefer the original image. In theory the viewer can only focus on the aluminium and one side of the leather: One is smooth and one is rough. The contrast is very high, but I think it is more obvious on where you should look.

I wonder if I should have chosen something different to photograph on “texture”. I have another image on colour, which shows the texture on the strap quite well. However, I choose this one as the “texture” image, because the strap is the only thing that has strong colour in this camera, and I want to keep the strap associated with “colour” as much as possible. On the other hand, I could have done a macro shot with the leather fills most of the frame, I can have less contrast while showing the texture across the board. At the moment, I cannot try this type of shoot because none of my lens has marco capacity and cannot focus that close. I think maybe the next gear I should buy is a lens reversal ring to try this idea out.