Friday, January 21, 2011

Exercise 3 - Shapes (Egg)

Week 3 of the exercises, and this time, the star of the shoot was the Egg. When I first learned of the exercise, I have thought of several ideas how I wanted my image to be, but when I asked Nathalie if it would be okay to use more than one egg for this exercise, she told me only one egg shall be used, so as not to confuse with the actual shape of the egg. With that in mind, I set up our dinner table to take my egg shots.

Egg (Black)

Getting the egg to "stand up" was obviously the most difficult thing to do, so I sought the help of Mr. and Mrs. Forks from last week's exercise to be the egg stand. I think the forks provided a good leading lines, emphasizing the egg more. Again, I used my sister's black shirt as the base, and our dining area wall as the background. The only light for this came from my trusty desk lamp, which I positioned on the left side of the egg. Using the tip Nathalie gave in my last week's exercise picture, I set my camera to a faster shutter speed (1/200), which really lessened the glare on the egg created by the light. Thanks for the tip, Nathalie!

Personally, I was already okay with this, but wandering through a photography forum lead me to the idea of doing WoW (white on white). Tidying up the dining area, I took all of my props outside to attempt another shoot.

Behind the scene:

Egg Shoot BTS

I used white shirt as the background, and as the base, I laid one of sister's lace top to provide some texture in the image. Our terrace was well lit, but I still turned on the desk lamp to add more light into the egg, helping it to trace its shape into the background. As another prop, I used one of our nest looking dried noodles to help the egg to stand, but as you can see, the "nest" looked way too small for the egg, making the whole thing imbalanced.

Kitty Intruder Kitty Intruder

Oh wait, what's this? There's an intruder in my set! Hahahaha. That's my kitty Oreo, and he's one sweet baby, he would always check what I am doing. I got up to get the trash bin for the noodles, but when I came back, I saw him sniffing the noodles! I asked him to get down - even carried him off the set, but he still came back knowing I was there. In the end, I just let him sit on my lap while I shoot.

Egg (White)

Among all the pictures I shoot for the second part of the set, I chose this one. Unlike the one in black, I positioned the light at the right side of the egg, because placing it at the left side would create shadow.

So... which one was better, the black or the white?

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*** Jenn ***