Week 9 Identity
This MUST be an easy one! Everybody has an identity. 'Identity' is a way of labelling people and we're doing that all the time! So why was it so hard to come up with an image for the theme. :bang:
I thought of documents relating to identity, but Graulges beat me to it - and his exotic French collection is much more interesting than my bus pass.
So I got to thinking - always dangerous
How on earth do you identify yourself except as, in my case, a wife, a mother, a mother-in-law, a grandmother, a dog owner, Plot24(back) on the allotment, etc, etc? Well, I suppose we're all the products of our particular gene pool and our identity is formed from this.
I've just started to delve into our family history so my contribution for this week is an item from my family past. It's a medallion which was given to families of servicemen killed in World War I, and commemorates my Uncle who died at 18 in the last few days of that war. It would be a matter of pride to think that his bravery and sacrifice has travelled through the generations, and comforting to hope that none of us will ever be called on to demonstrate that level of courage.
With this I wanted to suggest a continuity of some kind from the past to the present and into the future. I came up with the idea of the shadow from the medallion (the past) stretching forward (into the present day). This meant backlighting of some kind, but keeping the detail in the medallion.
The big plan was to use natural light for the medallion, with a back light to cast the shadow forwards, supplied by other means - roll out the trusty maglight.
The trusty maglight, its big brother and its little sister all failed dismally to do what I wanted. End of Plan A.
Plan B - use bright sunlight to get a strong shadow and balance object lighting as best I could with camera settings. Well I got the shadow -
changes subject rapidly, ignoring object lighting and ended up doing the rest in photoshop. :thumbsdown:
Lessons learned this week:
1 I wanted a challenge - and I found it.
2 Lighting was crucial - yes I know it always is - but this was painfully crucial.
3 Don't even try to use a torch in the same room as a dog whose big passion in life is chasing reflections, shadows and lights. Especially when you've got to dodge round the tripod, squeeze past a desk and position torch before the shutter is released.
4 Recognise when something isn't going to work and move on.
5 Finding something to prop up a heavy metal disk isn't easy if you don't want it, or its shadow to be seen. Tin of baked beans - too tall, any tin cast unacceptable shadow at the sides, Blue tak wasn't strong enough, clever little contraption with 2 holding clips wouldn't sit on the product table. Grrrr ...
6 Photoshop is wonderful - and yet again I've discovered how much I don't know. :bang:
7 But - I HAVE learned how to use the timer on my camera.
8 I need to be a bit more careful with cropping. I've not left enough space on the right. :bonk:
9 I would have liked the shadow to be longer and narrower but the sun didn't co-operate.
... and, if you're wondering - I did think about cleaning the medallion but I thought it looked more like the 'past' in its natural state and it did just cross my mind that it might be easier without too much light bouncing off it.
C&C very welcome - I'm not convinced that I've really demonstrated 'Identity', but I enjoyed the challenge.
Jean
lol 
