I used a table with a glass top for the third photographic session so that I could illuminate the shell from underneath. I thought that this might be a way to capture the colours and translucence of the shell. I had done a workshop at my local photographic club which involved photographing glass objects by placing them on lightboxes with quite effective results, and hoped for a similar result with the shell.
A diagram of the lighting set up is shown below.
I took the photos with the lamp unshaded to bring out the surface texture of the shell, and I also took some photographs with the lamp pointed from the side (see part 4).
I took no further photographs of the silver sea horse as I was fairly confident that I would get some reasonable results with the sea shell photographs.
I selected two photos with the lamp shining from underneath the subject.
Sea shell surface texture 1
Nikon 18-200mm at 200mm: Iso 200 f16 for 1/2 second
Sea shell translucence
Nikon 18-200mm at 200mm: Iso 200 f32 for 2 seconds
Observations
The camera settings were virtually the same as above; white balance set to tungsten, manual focus and exposure.
In order to minimize flare, I fixed a piece of cardboard underneath the table top so that it shaded the camera lens. I used a silver foil reflector held over the shell in various positions to light up shadow areas and add highlights to the dark side of the shell.
The glass surface of the table is far more reflective than the black paper surface used in the last group of photographs. The reflection seemed generally to draw attention to the outline of the shell rather than its texture and colour. I therefore chose to include only the narrowest band of the reflection in the glass.
I took some photos with a white board background and others with the black velvet. The white background was obliquely lit by the lamp under the table so that it appeared to be pale beige in the photographs. Whilst similar in hue to the colours of the shell, the photographs with the white background were quite pleasing. It was just chance that the two photos that I selected from this group were both against the black background.
- Texture 1, the shell is viewed sideways on. The foot opening is not visible and the pointed top of the shell is seen in profile at the bottom right of the frame. (The position is similar to that in Form 3 image in part 2.) The lighting of this curved surface is fairly even so that the curvature is not emphasized. The hard-edged light is picking up the pattern of parallel lines of small blobs across the surface. There are highlights on the tops of these spots so that they stand out against the rest of the shell. I tightly cropped the frame around the edges of the shell as this seemed to emphasize the surface texture and downplay the edges of the shell. I also converted the photograph to black and white as this draws attention to the texture of the shell surface in the picture.
- In Translucence, I placed the shell in a position where the interior of the shell is lit from within by the lamp below. This area of translucence is reasonably in balance with the brightly lid underside of the shell, and the reflected light on the upper surface. I found by trial and error that the reflected light needed to illuminate the pointed end of the shell rather than the other end. It also improved the visual impact if there were small highlights on the spikes along the upper surface. I also like the yellow stripes along the bottom edge of the shell. The colours in this photograph are otherwise relatively muted.
Conclusions
In order to portray the texture of the shell surface without a macro lens, I had intended to select a small part of the shell with an interesting texture to make a composition which I could crop out of the larger frame. However, I found that the pictures of just part of the shell were not as strong as those of the complete shell. Apart from the visual interest, another factor was the reduction in quality of the image at smaller sizes from the original photograph.
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