"Shaping Light" Presentation

On April 4th I gave a presentation to the Yaquina Arts Association Photographers group called “Shaping Light.” YAAP had asked me to give a presentation based on the work they’d seen in the PAG’s “Rosie For a Day” project, two of which are shown below.

Originally we’d thought to do the presentation about photographing found objects because that was really central to the Rosie project (and her photography). As I looked at the images, though, I realized that what they were really about was deliberately manipulating light to bring out the shape of the object. Scanning through my work, I realized that this is a hidden core concept behind much of my photography. I’ve been doing this for years and developing a lot of technique around it without really noticing. So I put together a presentation to talk about different projects I’ve done and techniques I’ve used.

The first project I discussed was “Discovered Beings” where I identified faces in household furniture and shaped the light to bring those faces out.

All of these images use black and white to highlight the physical form except for the last one, which I used to segue into the concept of using color to shape the emotional impact of the photograph. This urinal (not in my house, thankfully!) uses color to make it even more disgusting and to strengthen the horrified look on its face.

I showed lots of other example photos and talked about all sorts of ways to shape light, including strobe tricks, long exposure, and light painting. These are some of the photos I showed.

Escaping the Culvert

I haven’t thought of a good title for this yet, but I created all the light here using long exposure, shadows, a strobe and light painting.

Surprise!

From my series “Twisted Selfies,” this was made using strobes and long exposure.

The Crazy Box

One of my all-time favorite photos, I used this to talk about transparency of black, non-reflective things and to introduce the “multi” strobe effect.

I used shaped light extensively in my “Inside Lives” project. I created the shadows I wanted, used long exposure and lighting techniques, and shaped the color for emotional impact. Here are a couple examples I gave in my presentation, and of course here’s the whole collection.

I was grateful for the chance to look through my photos with a different eye and see the growth of a whole set of techniques and an eye toward using them. Artificially shaping light has become almost a backbone for my work over the years and I hadn’t really realized it.

I also enjoyed giving the presentation. The YAAP was a good and interested crowd. I joined them two weeks later to see their own takes on shaping light - a followup to my presentation. They’re a talented group of photographers!