Popular Photography - February 2015 USA

LIGHT THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY
SIMPLE
COMPLEX
A
C
B
KRIS HOLLAND/MAFIC STUDIOS
To light her glass marbles, Catherine MacBride relied solely on low-angle,
late afternoon natural light (A) that poured in through the windows of her
west-facing sunroom. The light was crisp and warm-toned from the lowlying
sun, which added some saturation to the red, orange, and yellow
marbles. Other than lighting, her main concern was keeping the marbles
in place. When she first set up the shot on a smooth, white kitchen
table, they rolled whenever she moved. “I didn’t want to glue them down,
because they’re transparent and the glue would have shown in some
places. My solution was a bright, white piece of watercolor paper (B) with
a coarse texture that helped hold the marbles in place. To do this, make
sure your surface is level before you start,” she advises. To conveniently
shoot straight down on a subject, she recommends a camera with a large
back-panel LCD screen, like her Fujifilm X100S (C).
“I also had to be quick because
in Ireland there’s always the
possibility it could cloud over and
rain,” she quips.
Another challenge here?
“When shooting on white under
bright sunlight, it’s always easy
to blow out your highlights. I had
to keep exposure in check so that
didn’t happen,” says MacBride.
Even under the same lighting,
different types of marbles can
produce different effects. Clear
glass “cats’ eyes” cast lowcontrast,
gray shadows that are
inflected with the marbles’ inner
MacBride
shot with
a Fujifilm
X100S
compact
with its
fixed 23mm
f/2 lens,
exposing for
1/1000 sec
at f/16, ISO
1000.
Fujifilm
X100S
($1,299,
street)
colors and swirls. Opaque milk
glass marbles would have thrown
darker, colorless, high-contrast
shadows that would have created
a more graphic effect.
MacBride says that lighting
her marbles was relatively easy
compared to arranging them in an
interesting pattern. “I organized
them by eye. I usually move
things around until they look
right. I seem to have a knack for
it,” says the photographer. She
Strathmore
400 Series
watercolor
paper,
12-sheet pad
($5.95,
street)
placed the marbles on a white
sheet of paper that she’d taped
down so it couldn’t move.
After she’d captured her shot,
she opened the file in Adobe
Camera RAW and brightened
the whites and increased overall
contrast, checking the histogram
to make sure not to blow out her
highlights. “I also had cleaned
up a few dust motes with Adobe
Photoshop’s useful Healing tool,”
she says.
—Peter Kolonia
POPPHOTO.COM POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY 37