I have had an idea for a while to do a series of images along the theme of "Portraits of a Phone Box". So, last night after the rain and in the freezing cold I decided to go around my neighbourhood looking for a phone box or two. I found some too...From a technical standpoint, these are pretty tricky little buggers to photograph well. The metering of the light in the scene needs to be spot on so the orange "T" cap on the booth isn't over exposed, yet I still want enough ambient light from the booth to spill over a portion of the frame.
I found it works best to set your camera to spot or partial metering mode. Set your camera to aperture priority mode and get a spot reading from the orange cap on the booth, remembering what the reading was. From memory this image was f/8.0 @ 16 seconds. I then set the camera to manual mode, selected f/8.0 @ 13 seconds (1/3 stop under), took another spot reading from the cap - then finally recomposed the frame and took the shot. Easy.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool and have taken a few more since and I hope to take one or two locations per week with this until I have enough nice images to create a gallery - I guess I am not trying to win any photographic awards with these but rather just have some fun and make myself a better photographer along the way... and isn't that what it's all about?
I think I would have been tempted to (ab)use the curves tool to bring the shadows out a bit (though not so much that the halo around the orange cap shows). :P
ReplyDeleteAn exposure blend could also work for static scenes like this...
Thanks Leahcim. I did consider that very adjustment with the curves tool but I favoured the look (in this particular image) of the darkness surrounding the booth. I have since taken a few more images of other booths where there is way more ambient light in the scene; unlike this image. I guess I am not only trying to get different booths in different locations but also different tonal variations and light levels in these images that are essentially of the same thing - being a phone booth. I guess I can call it my lame interpretation of artistic licence.
ReplyDeleteI will be posting a few more images shortly so people can see what I mean regarding ambient light levels.