Citrus Splash
Here’s a shot that I took today in my little makeshift lightbox that I also spent the day making. I made my lightbox in a very slapdash fashion by cutting a decent sized cardboard box down the side and painting all the panels white. I’ve also got a hell of a lot of CFL lamps hanging around which are pretty handy for shaping the light just how I want it. And finally my most important purchase was a 400 watt halogen exterior light that is great for concentrating a hell of a lot of light on a specific point so that I can increase my shutter speeds and catch little details like droplets of water. I used a piece of plastic sheeting that I found lying around as a diffuser, and ta-da! A fairly functional studio for around the 50 euro mark. Not too shabby at all.
I created this shot because I’m doing a course in Photoshop at the minute, and judging from the views of my teacher and classmates I feel like the world has gotten to a point where people simply expect every polished looking shot to be created in post production. Photoshop is indeed a great tool for graphic design and creating digital art, but I don’t think that it’s even close to a necessity for good photography.
I hope that this shot, which came out of my camera just as you see it, shows that good photography can stand up on its own without the need to be manipulated on a computer screen. It took me many attempts to drop 3 slices of citrus fruits into a glass of water whilst trying to focus on the right point and click the shutter release at just the right moment to take this picture, but surely that’s the joy of photography isn’t it? Trying to crystalise a moment that lasts just 1/3000 of a second so that it may well end up outliving yourself, surely there’s no small amount of beauty in such a process.