Creating Darkness out of Existing Light

One of the things that captivates me about photography, and frankly all forms of rendered art is the depiction of light, especially when something dramatic is done with it. The chiaroscuro technique used by painters popularized such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio illustrates how light itself can be a significant aspect of a scene.

This photo is one of my earlier works where I began focusing on using and modulating light to and effect. In this photo I wanted to create the effect of the mushrooms being a source of light. The light that I want is already in the photo so it was just a matter of modulating the light in the right way and adding some shadows.

_{Photo by Kelly Anderson taken with the Nikon >D5100}

Here is the original photo. It is fairly well lit and exposed, and you can see that the light is primarily shining down from above and slightly from the left of the frame. This gives me a perfect directionality to the light to create the version above.

_{Photo by Kelly Anderson taken with the Nikon >D5100}

My first task was to mask out the areas that would not be illuminated if the undersides of the mushrooms were the source of light, and then use a levels layer to bring the light down to a very low level. I used a regular layer to paint a areas where I wanted cast shadows using vivid light as the blend mode. I painted over the areas that where light was falling with the color of the light from the mushroom and used the color blend mode to give the impression that the light was from the mushrooms. In lightroom I toned the shadows to be blue to give the the impression of night time.

Let me know what you think of the effect and what you think about the role of light itself in your work or art in general.

Cheers, @kellyjanderson

If you liked this post, you I invite you to visit some of my other recent posts below.

Black Slug Banana Slug Go!	Collaboration on a Carousel of Swings