Wednesday 20 January 2010

020: Cotton Buds

f/16, 1/180 sec. ISO 100, low-power flash and white refelectors. This sort of image clearly highlights the presence of dust paticles on the camera's sensor. I postprocessed this (adjusting white balance, sharpness and exposure,) but did not edit out any imperfections.
Apart from that it's a revealing image, showing the spider-silk-like strands of cotton on the tips. The soft bumpyness would look quite dreamy if a wider aperture was used but I wanted to show up the imperfections this time, and I also found that the flash's power was difficult to control as everything was white. It's flash-lit from above and slightly behind which seems to work well as it casts soft shadows on the front of the buds, enhancing the texture at the side it's seen.
I should consider cleaning the sensor sometime soon. It doesn't usually show up as I don't normally stop down my photos too much, but I do sometimes spot an annoying blob here and there.

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