Assignment 4: Reshoot - Shape

The last shoot to be discussed is the sharp image. Here is the original shoot.

Here is the comment from Alan:

“In this image you have adopted a more dramatic lighting plan with your subject in the same frontal position as in the last image. It is a well composed image but I feel that there is a certain amount of ‘overkill’ in the lighting because the shadow area at bottom right tends to obscure the outline of the shape of the subject.”

The bottom right is where the camera touches the table. I hope I understand this correctly, the bottom of the camera and the table is equally unlit, so you cannot see the separation between them. So is there any way to separate the two? Here are two possible solutions:

1)      Hang the camera in mid-air with fishing line and clean up the fishing line in Photoshop

2)      Fill light

Believe it or not, #1 seems to be the cleaner solution but it is also harder. It is less obvious how to hang a camera when there is only two holes on the side (for the strap) and keep it perfectly still and square to the camera. I need a third points to put the fishing line on, but it is not obvious where. Since I have un-used film inside the camera, I don’t want to open the film cover yet.

On top of it, so far I have never deploy Photoshop in this course. I don’t want to start yet. I have no ethical problem in using Photoshop (apart from I don’t really know how to use it yet), but I feel like I should use it to do something I can absolutely not get around with, instead of cleaning wires.

Fill light is doable, but there is trade off. The original shoot is very dramatic. Any fill from the front will spills to the background and will reduce the dramatic effect. It is possible to angle the light so that it spills less, but I find it impossible to eliminate the spill. It still won’t remove the table, or light up area between the camera and the table, but it gives more clue that this is a camera.

Here is the re-shoot, the fill is angle to a way such that it doesn't spill as much, but it still spill to background.

  

There is something I tried while moving the fill around. At the end I think it is possible to eliminate spill by using a very tight paper snoot, and angle the light directly downward. The effect of it is it gives more clue of the camera. Still, if a light shines on the camera, the aluminium will be brighter than the metal. Therefore, it is unlikely to create a separation using fill, but this method will give more clue that the subject is a camera because it lit up aluminium element at the top.

I think this is a possible solution without damaging the atmosphere I tried to create.