Photography Challenge Week #13

Yet again it's that time of the week: A Step in the Journey's Photography Challenge!

I am really enjoying participating in this challenge; although I studied photography at A-Level I have become very lazy with my photography! This challenge is stretching me to think about the shot I'm taking.

Anyway, on to my photograph for this week's theme, silhouette:

Cairo Sunrise

Technical details: f/7.4 (apparently), 1/1600, no flash

The camera set the aperture; rather than have the camera set to manual I used the shutter speed priority setting. Actually I think the computer was lying to me since on manual I only have a choice of f/2.8 or f/4.0!

I already knew how I was going to set up this shot; my biggest challenge was deciding what to photograph! 

Eventually I decided on a bust of an Egyptian cat, which my Mum bought me on a trip to Egypt. To give it a little height, I simply set it upon a little wooden trinket box. 

To set up this shot, I used the following: 

• A piece of interfacing
• Dressmaking pins
• A 60 watt lamp
• A large fold-up pattern cutting board

First off I folded the pattern cutting board into a square tube. Then I set my little statue and the box just inside one end. I fixed the piece of interfacing over that end using dressmaking pins, since tape would have ruined the cardboard cutting board.
I then set the lamp to shine through the interfacing and onto the statue, and took the shot from the opposite end of the tube.

The tube was probably around 1 metre long, though I found I needed to reach into it a little to frame the shot as I wanted.
I think fabric or tracing paper would work just as well for this--the only reason I used interfacing was because it was closest to hand!

Next week's theme is going to be sunset. We get some beautifully coloured skies here sometimes; here's hoping that some point this week those pinks and purples and oranges will show off their full brilliance!


Later I'll be posting part 2 of my Halloween-o-rama--hope you'll come back to check it out! :)