Tic Tac

Except it's only a tac. Push pin. Whatever you want to call it. Not a tasty morsel of pure sugar. Sadly. But then again if it was, I probably would have eaten it before I got to shoot it...

Anyway, I have this little box of tacs in my room, which I've used in the past for other photo projects. Like the tac shadows I did last year. They are so simple, yet can make all these really awesome complex designs at the same time.

But tonight, I wanted something simple. Very simple.

Macro lens filter thingy was the answer. Shooting at f2 with that thing makes the world go oh so hazy. Everything is incredibly burry, like beyond recognition blurry. Only the millimeter you have in focus is in focus. Quite wonderful for many applications. Like this one.

I set the tac on a white board, and then used my Maglite as the light source. It made kind of a cone or light hitting  the tac, highlighting one side, and plunging the other into shadow.

With a large depth of field, it's not too interesting, I mean sort of...but it's just a picture of a tac...

But now add in the shallow depth of field and you have something much more abstract and moving. You think you know what it is, but you're not quite sure because it's so vague. Form is such an interesting thing to play with. In architecture the angles and light plays and shadows are wonderful. In macro imagery, it's the shallow depth of field you get and crazy things you can make with it.









For the final image, I shot at f2, ISO200, and then whatever the camera wanted for the rest. I shot in Av mode, which is aperture priority. I set the aperture, the camera sets the shutter. Quite nice.

Editing, all did was convert to b/w, and then up the contrast a bit. Just a bit. It's almost straight out of the camera.

See you tomorrow!