-
sunrise, sunset
each day the sun rises, the sun sets
the world turns to create this illusion
your day may be my night
my calm, descending orb may be
your burning, rising fireball
all the while, the ground we stand solid on
is actually spinning relentlessly under us
whatever you “see” is perception driven
beauty and sadness
tragedy and joy
heartache and elation
all of these things shift forms
based on what the angle is
my lens is different than yours
yours is not the same as
his and hers and theirs
even common details
become blurry, ultimately
arguing absolutes and opinions, equally pointless
spend more time accepting
try harder to be aware and awake
be ready to receive whatever
put your energy into love
open your heart and mind
prepare to view from a different angle
try to avoid shame and judgement
see and feel and embrace all you can
expand and let in as much light as possible
before the last revolution completes
and the shutter closes forever. -
Darkness, Light… and Human Development
I have the gift of being able to capture my son’s life, and his essence, in images – already I look back through them and marvel at what happens when passion, love, skill, and an observing heart & mind come together. I can see his life unfolding and see his different personality traits emerge as I look through this growing archive. It blows my heart and mind.
Talk about bittersweet. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
By the time I recognize this moment this moment will be gone, but I will bend the light, pretending that it somehow lingered on.
~John Mayer, Clarity*****
© Lotus Carroll, All Rights Reserved
To license commercially, please email. -
quantum heart murmurs
a few yesterdays ago
in the hours between the deepest of night
and the rising warmth of the sun,
when i was feeling how heavy
the weight of forgetting is,
i wrote you a letter.it holds all of the secrets
i wanted you to know about my heart,
and the way that you left things
like the scattering of leaves
after a storm that never
showed up on anyone’s radar.it tells the story of how many nights
i held your shape in the dark with my soul,
waiting,
and the way that i could make my breath
actually say your name even when i held it.i wrote about the way that the moon
reminds me of the shiniest part inside of me
that you found and then stole
but that somehow still lights my way home
when i feel alone.when i was done with the damp pages,
i folded it into a tiny, star-shaped heart
and carefully postmarked it
to a future you, who may or may not
someday care.To license commercially, please email.
-
how to: silhouette photography / self portraiture
Sometimes you can say just as much, or even more, with the suggestion of a thing as you can with all of its details. This is true of silhouette photography – a genre that can be alarmingly beautiful and expressive. If you’ve never shot silhouettes, you may be wondering how to achieve this look. It’s fairly simple to get the basics down. From there, you can let your creativity run wild.
The Basics:
The most important thing to remember is that your subject should not be well lit from the front. In addition, there should be a significant light source in the background.
The subject is whatever you want forming the silhouette. In the case of self portraiture, this subject is you. We want to reduce lighting from the front because we want to obscure most of the detail – this is what creates an outline, or silhouette.
There are many ways to obtain this, from studio lighting to sunlight. Sunsets provide an amazing backdrop for silhouettes. They are pure, simple, and beautiful. Play around to see what you can achieve.
Once you’ve identified a subject and have a backlight, attend to camera settings. Expose the image for the backlight, rather than the subject. This way, your subject will be very dark, creating an outline with little detail from the front.
Voila! This is the basic formula for silhouette photography.
A few things to remember:
- create distinct, clean shapes with your silhouette subject(s)
- try to reduce excessive clutter or multiple other confusing shapes in the image unless they add to the “story” you want it to tell
- avoid foreground lighting
- identify or set up a significant source of back lighting
- no one formula for camera settings is perfect. the strength of your light will dictate what you’ll need, so experiment
- don’t forget to pay careful attention to scene setting and composition, as with all photos, once you get the technique down
- for self portrait silhouette photography, you will find the following tools incredibly helpful: remote/intervalometer, tripod
Here are some examples of silhouette self portraits I’ve created, with some basic information you can review.
Of course, rules are meant to be broken, and you can play around with the basic setup and then go beyond it, tweaking things in so many ways to create different kinds of photos.
Here, there is obviously a lot going on, so the silhouette is clean, and there is “clutter.” But it’s interesting clutter, and adds to the mood:
You can also adjust lighting on the subject to create “near-silhouette” images. Some details of the subject are lit and visible, while others are dark, as with the following self portrait.
Go forth, find the light, and create silhouettes.
To license images or text commercially, please email.
-
Life Moves On While You Stand Still
Parked on a little gravel shoulder that leads into a quarry area in the early evening after all workers had called it a day and gone home for dinner, I leaned against the side of my car and waited. It only took me 5 minutes to shoot multiple images and capture 5 red vehicles in the mix. This was my favorite. Perspective is everything and you only ever control how fast you choose to move – the rest of the world keeps its own pace.
Shutter Priority, 1/10s at f/8
ISO 640Prints: http://goo.gl/KwI1ym
This work by Lotus Carroll is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
To license commercially, please email. -
She Used To Sit And Sing To The Birds, He Whispered
This work by Lotus Carroll is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
To license commercially, please email. -
She Wasn’t Sure Where She Ended And He Began
I took this sunset image from a moving vehicle over a year ago. It is among my favorite images I’ve created so far. The sun seems to be trying to reach out to the mingling, intertwined trees as they embrace one another, warming this moment and their touch. At the same time, it looks to spread across the land, desperately holding on to each moment that is escaping as it sinks lower. Soon it will be too dark to see anything.
This work by Lotus Carroll is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
To license commercially, please email. -
In These Quiet Moments Love Speaks Loudest
My little 3 person family took a few trips to the beach last summer. On one of those trips we drove almost all the way there and then stopped in a hotel for the night before heading out for beach frolicking fun the next morning. This is a candid monochrome from that hotel. John is looking over at Braden, our (then) 6 year old, in the other bed. His expression speaks volumes. I love moments like this. Capturing them feels like being able to work real magic, the kind that will allow you to travel through time later, or the kind that lets you see inside of someone’s heart.