Photography – Page 34 – Sally Wakelin

People

I do like faces – I think most people do, “people watching” is instinctive. I have made attempts at recording interesting faces photographically and in paint. I recently participated in a portraiture and street photography day in London and found the courage to ask people if I might take their photograph, sometimes I didn’t ask! I was so pleased to find most people to be kind and generous – and falttered!

I was taking a shot of the alley, I saw him in the corner of my eye, he saw what I was doing and walked straight into shot and posed!

Didn’t ask – but his boyfriend noticed and they both were happy

Smoke

Painting, Photography

Portobello Beach near Edinburgh, 1st October – dusk on an unexpectedly warm evening.

The Edinburgh One O’Clock Gun – clicked the shutter a few seconds later than I’d hoped.

In my time as a conservator of paintings I learned that a semi opaque substance seen in front of a dark object or space, will appear as blue-hued even though it may be warm yellow or brown-hued itself. These two photos show that effect known rather pompously as the “Turbid Medium” effect, it also happens with other transluscent substances such as steam, mist and clouds.

This effect can be used to good purpose in oil painting especially in portraiture (a description of Rembrandt’s technique – a layer of light toned paint is laid thinly over a warm dark-toned area producing a cool effect in the upper layer suggestive of cool shadow on skin tones).

Slatted Shadows and Reflections

Jewellery, Photography

The image of the sunlight making slatted shadows on the wall reminded me of what I love about the kind of jewellery I make – repetition of parallel cuts.

All these fabulous photographs were taken by Matthew Booth who skilfully created exactly the kind of photos I had envisaged and intuitively understood how to transform mere objects into visions extending into the reflective surfaces.

All these pieces are made in Sterling silver and are available for sale from the Online shop

Sunlight

Photography

I am lucky enough to live in a house which is sunlit nearly all day, intensified by mirrors. I noticed this pot of daffodils was being lit from the “wrong” side, from the north, the sunlight was no longer falling on the table but was being reflected back onto the daffodils by a mirror. It gave the room a lovely sense of being lit up from inside.

Later, when the sun had moved round to the back of the house it was much weaker but still made some interesting shadows through the wooden slatted blind on the Spode “Velamour” vase.