Curiosity Studies III, Glassware
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Shiny
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Glass
Curiosity Studies III, Glassware.
The question here was about backlighting. How colour builds up through a series, where it lands, and how far the light spreads once it has passed through a cut form. Glassware was the way in, chosen because the object supplies the composition as well as the interest. Backlighting flattens, which is the recurring difficulty in glassware photography. A gradient behind the subject will happily read as a flat panel of colour, and the glass then sits on it as an outline with nothing happening inside. I split the gels across the frame into dual and triple gradients so there was a boundary for the glass to act on, then let the ribbing work as a lens, bending and repeating the colour field into stripes. Upturning and tilting the glasses moves that repeat around the frame.
The colours were chosen to clash rather than harmonise. Acid yellow into emerald into violet, with heavy foreground blur and several frames cropped down to the fluting alone, so the object is gone and only the optical behaviour is left. That last group is the useful part. Once the glass stops being a glass, what remains is a record of how much a surface can do to light before you have added anything at all.
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