05-20-09 – The Shadow Knows
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Photographs where a shadow is the main subject. Note: Silhouettes do not count as shadows.
Is this similar to the reflections contest, where the object creating the shadow should be exclued from the photo?
Is a silhouette a shadow? I have a pic of a chewed up leaf casting a shadow on a whole leaf. The photo is from underneath the whole leaf with bright sunlight behind. Will that work?
/if it doesn’t, I’m sure it will fit in someplace sometime.
I would think if the subject appears to be the shadow of the chewed up leaf it would be ok. If you wanted to post it Im sure we could come up with a couple of differing opinions to confuse everything.
IIRC, in the original discussion thread, silhouettes weren’t considered shadows, but I’ve slept many nights since then. I’ll try to find it for clarification and/or SilverStag can help clarify.
Not that my opinion is what matters here, since it’s not my theme, but I here’s how I think of the two. If you are taking a photograph of a object which is between you and the dominant source of light, then it’s probably a silhouette. If the dominant source of light isn’t lined up with the camera, then darkened areas behind illuminated objects are shadows. The object itself may appear as a silhouette depending on how much of the detail is lost in capturing the image. So, if you buy into that model, the only way to capture a “shadow” is to photograph an object from an angle that shows the area directly behind the dominant light source.
I think your photo (if I remember from the silhouette discussion) was complex in that there’s a translucent leaf between the camera and another leaf behind that. So the question is whether or not all those elements line up directly with the light source? If they do line up,then I think it would be a filtered silhouette. But if the line is zig-zaggy at all, then it could very well be a shadow of the far leaf seen through the translucent near leaf.
Does that help or just give you all a headache? Maybe both? 🙂
Oh hell. I’ll just save it. 🙂
Maybe I’ll submit a less than 2″ portion tomorrow just so that I can quit thinking about it. 🙂
/:)
LOL
And I thought my themes lead to splitting hairs.
A silhouette is still looking at the object that is blocking the light, and a shadow is a projection onto another object.
The different is pretty easy due to the “don’t have the original object in the picture”.
yeah, I would think a projection onto another object would be a shadow, even if you were looking at the shadow from underneath a translucent material.
For instance, if you project hand shadow animals onto a sheet in the middle of the room, it doesn’t matter which side of the sheet you view the images from, they’re still shadows.
yeah, I would think a projection onto another object would be a shadow, even if you were looking at the shadow from underneath a translucent material.
For instance, if you project hand shadow animals onto a sheet in the middle of the room, it doesn’t matter which side of the sheet you view the images from, they’re still shadows.
I’m fine with that definition, but since my calling in life is to identify edge cases to demonstrate where there really are no firm boundaries…
Consider a setup where a light, a hand puppet, an opaque glass panel and a camera are arranged along a straight line. Assume there’s as little distance as possible between the hand puppet and the glass… Using this definition, the photographs would be considered shadows. But imagine the glass was perfectly clear, then the photos would be silhouettes. So what if the glass was just a tiny bit opaque? Which would it be?
This is from the series I (unfortunately) referred to. I don’t really like this crop, but I don’t have time or interest to do it better tonight.
It’s a cool photo, but I’m not sure it comes across as shadows because of the crop.
Is this theme going to be mostly shadows of hands against a wall, light by a flash(light)?
Mine won’t…. I just got done with round one of my ideas…… Rounds 2, 3, 4 coming up.
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