Friday, March 2, 2012

New Eyes at Night, Inside & Out

Playing with the limitations of my phone's camera, I tried to not only explore the overlooked spaces that surround me daily, but to explore light and dark. So I am posting two photos, both taken in the dark of night. One focuses on interior light (and how it affects image exposure on my phone's camera) and one focuses on exterior dark (and how use of the flash on my phone's camera affects the nocturnal surroundings.


Interior
This is an extreme close up of a lamp that hangs in my kitchen. The tilted ECU perspective abstracts the shape and form of the lamp and reveals a disorienting space with beautiful curving lines and interesting contrasts between light and dark. The brightness of the bulb inside the lamp causes some overexposure that creates a point of disappearance. Looking at this photo, my eye travels around the curved shadowed spiraling "steps" and then gets sucked into the vortex of brightness.




Exterior
This is a low angle close up of a tree on my street. It was very dark out, so no preview image registered on my phone's screen. Therefore, I wasn't sure what results I would get when using the flash and blindly aiming my phone up into the branches. The flash and the autofocus worked to create an interesting depth of field. The branch in the foreground is overexposed, the mid-range branches are crisp and in focus, and the background branches begin to blur. The buds on the branches reflect the most light from the flash and become overexposed. They almost look as though they are illuminated from within -- like Christmas lights.

6 comments:

  1. The images you chose are amazing. You have a great eye for detail and great analysis. Nice sense of shape, light, lines.. I couldn't have said it better.

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    1. Aw, shucks. Thanks Makia. These guided blog posts have been fun.

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  2. When Makia showed your photo of the lamp, I was amazed. At first, I thought it was a some digital artwork. The detail, texture, lines, and warm light is so captivating. The lines itself just draws me into the light, and then I'm just stuck there in almost a trance state staring at the light.

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  3. Thanks, Brian. It took a lot of tries, and a lot of crappy photos, to get just the right composition.

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  4. These pictures are great! I'm in love with the night picture of the tree. The angle and light of the picture give such an interesting depth of field, almost as if the tree never ends. And it really does look like Christmas lights. Amazing amazing pictures.

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