For the season that is in it, I was going to take a picture of a little angel at my table – all white, shiny, and blond rows and flows of angel hair. A lichtgestalt – figure of light. Instead I received this:
I know what you are saying: “Should’ve used the fill flash!” Well – NO! If photography is (literally) drawing with light, then I was playing with light here. The photo was taken indoors against very strong sunlight at 200 ISO. With a small f-stop of 5.6 in order to get the required dof, I was able to shoot at 1/2000 of a second and receive a black silhouette rather than a lit-up portrait. That enabled me to pick out the little wisps of blond hair catching the sunlight from behind.
Without becoming too much of a techie photo geek here – knowing why you do what you do when you take pictures is important. Not only in to be able to recreate an effect, but to have the creative choice. That is what photography is at best: not just a snapshot, but a conscious decision how to represent a certain moment in time. And a photo stands out from all the other or similar versions of a motive when it is a different take on a familiar theme. And thus my little angel has turned out a black silhouette – with none of the dark mood associated with the “colour” black.
What do you think? Drop me a line and give me your thoughts…
2picsaweek 
Beautiful Sonja! I love what you did leaving the face in darkness with the sunlit wisps of hair, gives the photograph a very pensive and moody feel. Who needs that white shiny angel at your table when you have this?
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Thanks for your comment, Esther – sorry, took me a while to see it here. Love experimenting with light – it so often looks bad on the little LCD screen of the camera and then turns out better than the conventional shots…
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