This is a single shallow depth of field photograph, taken through a lamp I made back in 2010 at school. (pictures of the lamp and setup - https://imgur.com/a/JGAXFt8)
It's a Rubik's Cube inspired lamp, 4 wooden cubes, stacked and rotatable atop each other, with a clear colourless acrylic tube running through them all. Each cube has red, blue, green & yellow coloured acrylic panels.
I shoot through the central acrylic tube, shining lights; mainly 2-3 torches from different angles/distances, from the outside of the cubes, the light passes through the different coloured panels and illuminates the inside of the clear acrylic tube, melting together to form this image. This means that no two images are never really the same, the colours form and blend in different ways. This is mainly possible due to the shallow depth of field, adding the creamy colours.
(https://youtu.be/K0dkkwMJoP0 - here's a video example of how the light changes the image. The light used in this video is a small fluorescent tube, running the light back and forth and side to side over the panels).
In this image I used a Canon 6D mkii with a Sigma 35mm Art Lens @ f/1.4. Usually, there is very minimal editing made to the image, but for this series I was playing around with underexposing at capture and then boosting exposure and some highlights in the edit, this creates the more glowing tones in the orange. I've cropped it to 5x4 as some some darker shadow of the cube at the edge of the image didn't add anything.
Focus is set on the end of the tube which creates the sharp circle. A red acrylic panel is held in front of the end of the tube, thats where the colour comes from for that. I was shining a torch at the wall behind, thats what provides the gradient in the centre circle.
King regards,
Michael Constantine
1 Comment
I was so confused at what I was looking at. Then I clicked on the link showing the setup and was still very confused until the last photo. Really cool shot