365/12 - Day 23 - Light refreshments

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I was given this bottle of Gold Cuvee, sparkling white wine with edible gold flakes, as a leaving present from a project with Royal Mail that I had been working on. The neat thing about this wine is that the 22 carat gold flakes float in the wine and take a good minute or so to settle.... You will see why that's useful in a second. Clearly the interesting thing for me, apart from the emotional sentiment, in all these photos was the lighting. I was modelling and creating a version of reality, shaping the world around with some very simple lighting techniques.

Where as this is still not "true reality", as the flash and umbrella have been placed there, this IS possible in terms of physics, this is not an imaginary PhotoShop world. Having said that I'm also not reporting the real world, I'm creating/visualising an idea or picture in my head in the real world. I'm Telling a story.

Before you read further, see if you can work out where the lights are.

365/12 - Day 8 - Looking back

Before you think I'm slightly obsessed with images of myself, please remember these were for somebody else! Believe it or not I actually don't like being in front of the camera. This is another very simple set-up, the photo was taken in my cloakroom as it has a nice red/crimson curtain. The light is from the 580exII bounced onto white tiles camera right, the room is only about 4ft wide so its also bouncing a second time off the tiles on the left. I used my giraffe as a focal place holder then set the timer and ran.