Home Experimentation - 13.12.22
For this, I wanted to test out if the fake blood recipe worked on the different origami models that I was going to use. For this, I decided to be outside as this would provide me with natural light. This is the only light source that I can conveniently use when I am at home as I do not have any studio lighting setup that I can use.
I also decided to use a helios M42 F2 55mm lens due to having this "swirling" effect when focusing on really close subjects at the largest aperture. It is also one of my only lenses that can open to F2, which is useful when I wanted to have a shallow depth of field and interesting bokeh in the background due to having glass imperfections.
The contact sheets below show what happened during the experimentation during daytime.
For some of the photos, I set the origami figures on fire as this would provide me with an interesting take on my studio idea. I think that conveying this in my photos makes it so that some of the visceral reactions that I want to show when looking at these photos. After all, the idea for the studio is called "paper killer" and I need to show this through the photos.
After this was done, I shot some photos at night with the figures on fire to see what type of effect that would create when shooting in a dark scene. I hoped that lighting the origami on fire would add light to the scene as during nighttime, having any sort of light would be difficult.
I could not do this in college as this would definitely be under the health and safety risks that the college is under, but I know that I could bring in the remains of the origami butterflies to shoot in the studio.
The contact sheets are shown below;
Shooting this harder due to the lack of light that was available whilst shooting in the dark. After shooting some shots, I decided to add the kitchen light (as the table that I was using was close enough to the kitchen windows to give ambient light) and to use some street lights to add some ambient light in the scene.
There were also shots that I managed to take with the kitchen window being shown in the reflection of the table that I was using. The reflection gives enough light to show that it is a window, without it being too obvious in some of the photos.
I have selected the few photos that I am happy with from today's shoot and will be making some adjustments due to the low spread of the fire when setting the origami on fire. This will be done by using white spirit or any other liquid that can burn easily.
I also tried using my flash with them being outside, but I can only get a front-side flash as I personally do not own a flash gun for modern cameras or have a wireless trigger for said flash.
It does give this forensic sort of view to the photos, but I decided not to use it after the first couple of shots due to the difficulty I faced when trying to shoot manually at night and without a point of reference for the light and having a manual lens during the shoot.
The photos below are the photos that I took and have chosen from today's shoot.
