Description: This video encourages you to explore lighting sources that aren't typically used in photography.
Instructor: Felice Frankel
Viewing Recommendation
If you are using a laptop or desktop computer, we recommend you watch the video in full screen mode in high definition (HD).
And finally, to end this piece of the tutorial, I'd like to encourage you to use your imagination.
Think of lighting that's not necessarily in the textbooks.
LOOK AT THIS FOR EXAMPLE: It's a device that you'll be seeing a great deal of in our virtual tool of lighting, which you'll get to later.
I did not place it on the lightbox; I used the lightbox as a light source as you see in this image.
Because of its transparency and -- its actually quite beautiful just as something itself -- I put it on my flatbed scanner.
But, this is not a scanned image.
I'm actually using the light from the flatbed scanner, as you can see in this image.
Sometimes it could work if you get light from the side in this case.
And another idea that perhaps you haven't thought about is to use a small L-E-D flashlight if you want to image a very small area of your device.
Here we're just photographing the spiral, which measures about 2 and a half centimeters across.
All I did was shined and L-E-D flashlight onto that area.
Around the area, we get lighting fall-off, so we decided to only image this particular piece in the device.
This is the image I started making from a material called Ferrofluid.
And what you're seeing, actually, is a close shot of this material.
It is oil that has suspended in it iron filings.
I put it in a glass slide.
Under the glass slide is a yellow post-it, and under the yellow post-it are 7 circular magnets.
And you're seeing the small iron particles respond to the magnets.
It's basically too tight a shot to see anything of value.
In this image, I pulled away a bit, and I see a little a little more of what's going on, but basically the window panes become maybe too much of a distraction and it's not quite right.
And so I decided, seeing how reflective the whole image could be, to put a green card above it.
So now we're seeing a little bit of green reflecting off of the material.
It is just purely an aesthetic decision; it's not clarifying anything.
But I'm starting to think that I might have an interesting image here.
And, eventually, I did wind up with this final image: With the window pane; with the green card reflecting; and, if you really look carefully, you see the mistake of a bad photographer, because you see me.
Although, it's fun to play with the children and asking them to "Find Felice." But this is an image that got a lot of notice when I made it a while ago.
And I was using my imagination in terms of trying to find a-a way of using light in perhaps a different way.
