Assignment 5: Still Life

Stephanie Guo: Vanity

For this shot, I placed some objects that related to the theme of vanity on a black background (I used a black jacket). The lighting was overhead - this was done on a bed under a covered skylight window. Hence the natural light that came through was diffused through skylight covering, giving the scene a nice, soft glow. I wanted the light distribution to be equal, so all the objects would be emphasized, which is why I chose a bird's-eye view shot.

I used a black background because I thought it would add good contrast to all of my objects. I tried arranging the items around the mask, since the mask was so large. For image processing, I used a combination of brightening, boosting, and the "Orton" filter in Picasa to bring out the colors and the blackness of the background.