I am posting this single picture because I am proud of myself for figuring out how to make it work.
JUST JESSIE
To my eye, the light on the bloom seems to be coming from inside the bloom itself. Of course my eye is the only one I have so you will have to judge for yourself.
Often, with cascade style blooms, the curls pass in and out of the shadows cast by the bloom itself.
Realizing that we don't photograph "things," we photograph light reflected off of things, we have some control over what that light does. We don't have much control over the things themselves.
There are several different transformations that can happen to light as it encounters things. As we photograph things, those transformations that we are most interested in are; absorption, reflection, transmission, and refraction.
Absorption and reflection are what allow us to see colors. For the sake of simplicity, let's call sunlight white, an equal mix of the three primary colors of light; red, green, and blue. (red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors of pigment.)
If you are growing RED VOLUNTEER, when the white sunlight hits it, the bloom reflects the red part of the sunlight and absorbs the green and blue parts. For GREEN ARROW, it's a bit more complicated as the green heart reflects the green and absorbs the red and blue while the yellow part reflects the red and green (which mix to make amber, a secondary color of light (yes red and green light mix to make amber.) Enough already!
Finally the colors are refracted by the lens of the camera to make a photo.
Back to JUST JESSIE. I ended up placing my camera almost directly facing the sun and the bloom. The face of bloom was lit by sunlight being transmitted through the petals. The inside of the curls were lit by sunlight reflecting off of the back of the bloom! No shadows! So in a way, the light is coming from inside of the bloom.
Of course there still is the images progression through WI-FI, sensors, GPUs, and software and finally to some display or other, I won't go into that … ever … promise.
Charley
