Flashlight illumination and subject isolation...sorta flat

[spiffytumbleweed]

My wife is a potter/ceramicist and I wanted to shoot some pinholes of her work and was hoping to isolate the work from any sort of background to get sort of a floating look. I shot these on 4x5 film at night against a black background and illuminated them with a flashlight in multi-minute exposures on Fuji Acros 100. I got the isolation I was going for, but was not anticipating how flat it would look.

[steve irvine]

Great looking ceramics! The even illumination of the lighting looks fine to me.

[ketch]

These are Very Nice.... and the images are not too bad either .
Actually I think that flashlight worked just fine.

[colray]

Looks great!

[dwerg85]

Those look fine to me. How long was the exposure for these using the flashlight?

[spiffytumbleweed]

Those look fine to me. How long was the exposure for these using the flashlight?

The exposure varied based on how reflective I thought the surface was, but a couple of minutes is about right.

[renon]

The flat lighting is not bad, it fits to the subjects. Congratulations to your wife for the great pottery. To make the lighting more interesting you could place the light source offset to one side and illuminate the other side with a reflective area, white paper or a mirror for more harsh light.

[spiffytumbleweed]

The flat lighting is not bad, it fits to the subjects. Congratulations to your wife for the great pottery. To make the lighting more interesting you could place the light source offset to one side and illuminate the other side with a reflective area, white paper or a mirror for more harsh light.

I think lighting primarily from the sides will give better depth...next time.

[dvoracek]

I think lighting primarily from the sides will give better depth...next time.

or one big source at about 45 degrees. a window, an umbrella.