A couple of blogs back I wrote about shooting backlit flowers early one morning when the sprinklers were on. Then this past month I was roaming around the beautiful Stanford University campus late in the evening looking for images to capture. As I walked around the fountain sculpture shown below (the White Memorial Fountain created by Aristides "Aris" Demetrios) the sun moved back behind it creating a dazzling light show.
I couldn’t help but think of those flowers. Applying what I had learned from shooting them I was prepared to capture this set of images. This is why it is important to practice (I know you probably hate that word) your photographic skills at home and “along the way”. It prepares you for the future when you are at that far away photographic destination.
Besides capturing images from the side and taking advantage of the dark background, I also got down low and took advantage of the blue sky. I under exposed a bit to get the deep twilight sky look shown below.
The last image is one I call “The Mermaid’s Tale”.
Of all the image sets I shot at Stanford, these were the images that got me the most excited and made the creative juices flow. I am glad I was prepared.
Blog Image Notes: As with the flowers I generally had to adjust the EV to –1.- to –2.0 to handle the back light. I also shot with a range of shutter speeds to vary the shape of the falling water. The first image was at 1/80 sec and the last was at 1/800 sec. All images were processed using Lightroom 3 for tonality, etc.. The first two images used the Antique Light preset in Lightroom while the last two images kept the natural color.
After writing this blog I found this recent article about the fountain - http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/june/claw-makeover-update-061011.html
All images of the sculpture have been used with the permission of the artist.
Posts
