“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
— Emily Dickinson
For the shot of the day, here is a delicate pink feather on a bright colorful background. It is cold, grey, and snowy outside and I feel like I’ve been holed up
in my office for months without access to the outdoors. And, in reality, that is not far from the truth.
With work, both photography and 3D animation / motion graphics (my “day” job), keeping me nailed to the floor in front of my computer, my old Bessler copy stand is getting quite a workout of late. I’m that is ok with me. It’s an opportunity to try new things, play around, and experiment with new ideas and techniques. And what a great way to learn!
Anyway, back to the tiny feather. I simply set it on a small blue box and placed my maroon camera strap in the background. I attached my 50mm 1.8 lens to a full set of extension tubes and just started move the camera and feather around – looking for interesting compositions, playing with the depth of field by changing the f-stop, changing the angle of the lights, increasing and decreasing the shutter speed, etc.
For processing, I knew I wanted the final image to be bright and colorful. So I enhanced the contrast and color and ended up changing the color of the feather from the original purple to magenta / pink. I also added a very slight hint of bokeh via an image from my texture library. Them some sharpening, a little glow, a pass through Topaz Glow for some more atmospherics and then my normal clean-up of spots or imperfections, also known as “border patrol”.
Day 139 of 365
Here are a few shots from my cell phone of the setup. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the process.
