Title • untitled #0038

This current set of shots made me realise something about most of my recent photography, not in terms of content, but in terms of the circumstances under which they are shot. A lot of the stuff that I post is shot under flat light, of one sort or another – dull days on the beach, portraits with bounced fill-flash, and so on. All these recent shots though were taken under quite different conditions. All were quite dimly lit – this one, for example, was a six second exposure – but in each case the light was directional (albeit diffuse). In this sense the light becomes much more crucial to the photograph in that it becomes a component of the scene rather than just a source of illumination. That sounds pretentious, and I could probably have put it better, but what I guess I'm trying to say is that it was a good experience to spend some time shooting under different conditions.

Oh, and I couldn't think of a title for this one either.

Update: I'll reply to individual comments later on today, but in the meanwhile I wanted to say something about an issue that some of your have raised: i.e. was this staged? Yes, and no. I did move the tray, but only by a few inches to centralise it on the tiles. Had I not done so, in my opinion at least, the shot wouldn't have worked. Arguably, as quite a few of you have assumed that this is a contrived shot, it doesn't work like this either; but it seemed like a good idea at the time :-)