Use a combination of quality, contrast, direction and colour to light an object in order to reveal its form. For this exercise, we recommend that you choose a natural or organic object such as an egg or stone rather than a man-made object. Man-made or cultural artefactscan be fascinating to light but they’re already authored to some degree, which requires interpretation by the photographer; this exercise is just about controlling the light to reveal form.
You don’t need a studio light for this exercise; a desk lamp or even window light will be fine, although a camera flash that you can use remotely is a useful tool. The only proviso is that you can control the way the light falls on the subject.
Take some time to set up the shot. If you’re shooting an egg, you should think about emptying it first so that it will stand up. This is really a topic for advanced students at Level 3 but you may get some help from Google. The background for your subject will be crucial. For a smallish object, you can tape a large sheet of paper or card to the wall as an ‘infinity curve’ which you can mask off from the main light source by pieces of card. You don’t need to use a curve if you can manage the ‘horizon line’ effectively – the line where the surface meets background. Taking a high viewpoint will make the surface the background, in which case the surface you choose will be important to the shot.
Exposure times will be much longer than you’re used to (unless you’re using flash) and metering and focusing will be challenging. The key to success is to keep it simple. The important thing is to aim for four or five unique shots – either change the viewpoint, the subject or the lighting for each shot.
Add the sequence to your learning log. Draw a simple lighting diagram for each of your shots showing the position of the camera, the subject and the direction of the key light and fill. Don’t labour the diagrams; quick sketches with notes will be just as useful as perfect graphics.
I prepared the set, I have a corner in my house with a lot of light, 2 big windows and facing west, therefore especially around this time of the year, we get the sun to get into these windows around afternoon. I aimed for before it was actually hitting the window directly. I also have white blinds so I knew it would be interested to put them up and down and see how the light bounces in the space, as we also have a lot of other windows around the house so we get a lot of daylight.
(The photos are taken towards the end of my shoot which was a bit late in the afternoon, therefore the sun was already hitting the window directly).
Final
Set 1
Set 2
Set 3
Set 4
Set 5
There were some clouds so the light kept changing, I also kept the set where it was and came every now and again to shoot, therefore the shadows started to increase and the sun went down.
I also tried to see how it will look with my aperture lens
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