This week I want to continue on with our discussion of physical properties of things, and concentrate on the area where transparency and concept easily can be used to interesting outcome. As a general rule of thumb, the most common items that are transparent are glass or plastic derived, along with certain minerals such as diamonds and selenite, a form of gypsum, which actually looks similar to glass. Transparency usually comes hand in hand with high reflectivity, so serious attention must be paid to how you light your items so as not to have your light sources turn up in the middle of your primary subject. The usual solution here is to light from above, behind, or to the side of the item(s) being photographed. However, the goal in this blog entry is less about the specifics of lighting, but rather how transparent items easily lend themselves to easily illustrating concepts with the use of Photoshop.
Throughout my website, davidthewass.com, I use this approach in the still life and macro sections. Sometimes it is obvious, while other times the manipulation is more nuanced. Today, I want to look at the Migration photo above as it clearly illustrates how we can use transparency as a pathway to concept.
Before we get to how this photo was created, I would like to discuss the pre photographic thinking that underlies this photo. Generally, I like using one genre to discuss another genre, or blending two genres in my images. In this case, I had a piece of selenite around that had both a serrated and iron stained edge. It reminded me of a mountain ridge for a long time, but I just could not find the right sky for quite awhile. Then two winters ago, on an incredibly gray day, I stumbled upon a sky north of Sacramento just choked with darker birds, crows and starlings. It is that overcast sky, and the piece of clear gypsum that comprise migration.
Specific to Migration, the selenite "mountain" was shot on a piece of backlit white lucite with an extensive white area above the stone. Then we removed that white area above the make believe horizon, and dropped in the overcast sky filled with birds. Any birds that were below the horizon line were removed, to complete the image. Although the selenite is totally transparent, I wanted the photo to read as if we were looking at an actual mountain range. Critical to the concept was the removal of any birds that fell below the horizon line.
