Photography class: Assignment 1 - Playing with light

As I mentioned before, I am taking a digital photography class and I want to share with you all the homework I have to do.

My first homework was to play with light when taking a picture, to be more specific I had to:

• Select an object, any object.
• Use a lamp to provide the light.
• Put the object and the camera in a fixed position.
• Use the automatic setting of the camera without using the camera flash.
• Take pictures of the object lighting it with the lamp from all possible angles.

I took a lot of pictures of several different objects, I couldn't find the right one until I tried with a small wood sculpture of an old man, it was perfect because it is very expressive.

Here it is the first set of pictures I took:

This assignment was very interesting, I was able to see how the light affects the object and how you can create look different photos of the exact same object, making some of them better than the others just by position the light in the right place.

The light can make the same object look very different, sometimes it looks like if the object was moved, you can control how much of your background would be displayed, all of this affecting the composition of your photo, so you definitely want to play with light.

At the end I did another round putting getting a bit closer to the old man and moving him a little bit:

As you can see, the light can affect how the dimensions of your object are displayed, depending on the position of the light the object can look flat, but by moving the light you can show the tridimensionality of the object by playing with the shadows.

Your photos can become more expressive when positioning the light in the right place, play with it, experience it yourself. If you do, please share your results with us!