I challenged myself this morning: No breakfast until you make something beautiful from something ordinary.
Even after 35 years working behind the lens, and with enough photo gear to choke a mid-size SUV, I still find myself striving for simplicity. Line, form, the contrast between light and shadow, the beauty of everyday objects.
Several times in the last few weeks I have noticed these two metal folding chairs leaning up against the wall of the garage. We put these in the back of Karen’s car each Sunday morning as we get ready for church (we’re still meeting out in the church parking lot because of Covid-19). There was just something hauntingly beautiful about them. Something about the pebbled finish and the black sheen with white highlights. “I must make a photo of this,” I kept saying to myself.
And it was the way the tops of the chairs nested together that particularly caught my eye; the symmetry and gradients that naturally formed as the light fell on them. In the studio, the setup couldn’t have been simpler. I leaned the chairs up against a table under a single, enormous, umbrella attached to a studio strobe, and shot against a black background. And if you’re a fan of this blog, then you wil recognize my penchant for black-on-black, low-key images. It just strips away everything but light and shape.
I am extremely pleased with the result, not just because it is indeed a nice abstract image, but even more so because this is precisely the image I had seen in my mind’s eye for weeks. And so imagination becomes reality. Very much like when Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803.
Here is the big Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 100mm f/2.8 macro at f/10, 1/180th of a second, single studio strobe, big umbrella, 4-image stack
