Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Experimenting with light

My lighting setup has now been enhanced with two small battery-powered lamps (thanks, Mom!). They emit a bluish light.

For comparison's sake, here are my Primrose Earrings photographed using the old setup (one halogen desk lamp and a lamp with a plain old incandescent bulb):


And here are the same earrings photographed with the two new lamps arranged on each side of the photo box:

So, which do you like better? The biggest quibble I have with the new lamps is that they seem to wash out the delicate golden colors of the earrings a bit. In real life, the earrings have lots of rich golden tones, which is what I need to convey in the photo.

This picture uses the new lamps, and it's a bit more true to life:


However, you can still see all the blue cast onto the photo.

Of course, the real magic happens when I let my trusty blue paper to make the earrings pop:

In this photo, the lamps add more light to the photo without distorting the colors too much.

So, which setup do I use? Do I aim for ultimate truth in advertising, or add some pizzazz to my photos with interesting blue reflections?

I still need to test the lamps on blue-toned pieces. It's likely they will really enhance the colors. Also, I have some bright orange paper to test out!

No comments:

Post a Comment