Kirsti Näntö-Salonen
November 2023 - The Birth of Venus
Original
About the Image(s)
”The Birth of Venus” is a lighting exercise for the creative photography course I am attending this fall. A couple of years ago, half a dozen concrete statues mysteriously appeared along a small gravel road in our neighborhood. The classic mythological characters dropped in the Nordic forest make an oddly surreal scene that is my constant delight. The Birth of Venus is my favorite - under the garden gnome kitsch she still seems to carry the charm and mystery of the Botticelli original. For the night image, she is lit with a powerful flashlight from the side in a low angle. I tested a variety of settings to keep her white surface from overexposure but still showing some of her background. Fuji X-T4 on tripod, 55 mm, f/16, ISO 160, 4 s. Half of the time I kept the beam on the statue, and for the other half, I moved it around. I tried a lot of different presets for finishing touches: this is Photomatix Pro 7 Balancer filter that seemed to bring out extra details from the background. What do you think?
This round’s discussion is now closed!
5 comments posted
Nice image. However, I have been told quite a few times, "If it doesn't add to the image, it is actually taking away from it. That's how I feel about the trees on the left side. I think they split the image into two separate images. My suggestion would be to crop the left side up to the trees that are barely visible in the middle. I think that crop makes the statue really stand out. Just my 2 cents. Posted: 11/10/2023 22:52:06
