Light reflection (2 pictures to compare)

I never use flashlights or other artificial lighting equipment. Personally I think that you can make perfect pictures with advanced artificial lighting but you loose the ‘soul’ of the subject. For me it’s the challenge to use the available light and picture as is, followed by enhancing the ‘soul of the image’ with photo-processing software. At this stage I’m fascinated by the influence of (natural) light and it’s colour (temperatures) reflecting on my subjects. The colour of water surface, for example, changes continuously partly influenced also by the surrounding colours of vegetation etc.

Take this cactus (botanical name ‘Cephalocereus  senilis’ but just say ‘Old Man’s Beard’). It’s one with white hair as seen with the bare eye but it’s not that white if nearby other (flowering) plants with different colours. Than the ‘Old Man’ suddenly becomes a colourful personality (or must I say ‘plantality? 😉 ). To enhance the colours I only had to move the ‘contrast’ and ‘brightness’ sliders plus the ‘exposure’ one in Photoshop a bit. More important was to photograph it at the right time of the right day. I made three pictures this morning somewhere between 10 and 11 AM and only one had more or less the desired ‘natural’ colours.

The second picture is the original (as is). See for yourself!

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Author: Herman van Bon Photography

" I like to explore the possibilities and limits of digital art, I just let it flow to see where it can go, sometimes the end result appears quickly, sometimes the creative process takes months and other times  the creation dies in its own beauty". 

20 thoughts on “Light reflection (2 pictures to compare)”

  1. I dislike using artificial lighting equipment just as much. Doing a graduation party tomorrow night and already having nightmares about using flashlights ext, aaaaaahg!
    Beautifully made images 🙂

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      1. My pleasure 🙂
        Do you have any idea how bad I am with Photoshop, in Lightroom I can do the watermark……..terrible I know!

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    2. Oh yeah, that sucks, i hate flash too! Where possible i always try to crank up the iso to stay away from flash and just a slight bit of photoshop afterwards to brighten, but to be honest most of the time i decline offers like that 😉
      good luck,
      Ron

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      1. Hi Herman, i saw that 😉
        it´s just by enhancing brightness and detail the softfocus part below suffers a litle bit imo!
        But its a great photo and the light on the focused part is beautiful.
        Ron

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      7. Ok, ken het, ben langs die baai gereden en familie van vrienden wonen daar ook in de buurt, prachtig daar, niet verkeerd voor fotografie 😉
        groet

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