Light Directions

This is a composition I had in mind for a long time. Thanks Tatjana for your patience when I took dozens of pictures while moving the lights all around you! I think I managed to keep her happy, since she still smiled on pictures taken later during the portrait session. If you are interested, you can find a set of photos here.

I used one D-Lite strobe from different directions in order to obtain a number of pictures which I then put together to get this one:

Photo by Me (large on Flickr), 2010.

I was interested in how it would look like when pictures of the same face, lit from different angles, were put together in one image. The pictures are ordered according to the angle of the light in the respective photograph. The one in the middle is the starting point where the light comes from the direction of the camera. To the left and right the horizontal angle is then increased/ decreased in 45° steps. The same applies to the vertical axis. The single pictures on the right, at the top and at the bottom are lit from behind, from the top and from the bottom.

The whole set of pictures could be kind of wrapped around to form a sphere around the model. Hope that doesn't sound too complicated!?

Anyways, I think it looks quite funky and it is interesting to see how such a simple thing like the position of one single light source can change the character of a face in a portrait entirely. From now on I will have a nice example at the ready, when I have to give another flash or studio light workshop ;-).

Who Said Mermaids Don't Exist?

I was recently searching for underwater photographs on the web. Admittedly, I was flicking relatively quickly through a set of images on Flickr, when I was flabbergasted by this one:

Photo by mambolou, November 2008

My mind kind of registered the following things within the same fraction of a second when the picture came up:

1. The technical quality of the photo is not as great as, for instance, and airbrush work would be.
2. The technical quality of the photo is not so bad to be one of these rainbow press alien photos.
3. From this angle there is a kind of human like shaped creature peeking out of the water.
4. What is always on stand-by on a man's mind?

Is this a bloody mermaid *slam the back button of the poor laptop as quick as possible* ?!?

Next fraction of the second, the anti-climax of the story: unfortunately, it's not a mermaid.

Third fraction of the second: but it sure looks interesting, what is it?

The answer is given right below the photo by mambolou himself: "It is a Beluga whale. She was peeking above the water's surface as I snapped the shot. Ahhh, the song of the sirens!" This is another great example of how amazing our world is and how things appear totally different from different angles and in different circumstances. When specifically looking for pictures of Beluga whales on the web, I found hundreds but not a single one looked anything close to a human or had the appearance of this great picture.

All those of you who might think, is this guy blind? Please look straight into my eyes and tell me this picture of Stephen does not look similar!

By the way, this is the picture that I recently took of a lovely mermaid ;-):

Photo of Daryl Hannah from the movie Splash.

For those who don't know, Splash is a great movie that was produced when Tom Hanks was still cool.