Ray-Banter

Yep, I Had My Head In The Clouds

The response I received to the post Seeing The Light was very interesting. Several of the comments on the post - as well as a series of emails I received - asked how the photographs were taken. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I've been testing a couple of little Pentax cameras over the past fortnight. The shots of the Ray-Bans against a cloudy sky were taken with a Pentax Optio S10 - an ultra-compact, very slim camera that packs a lot of punch - 10 megapixels, no less.

Maybe it's my background in newspaper and magazine design/ layout, because I "saw" the image in my head before I started taking the shots. Often, that's half the battle when it comes to creativity. But because I knew precisely what I wanted, it was just a question of hitting the trigger.

In answer to your queries, I held the Ray-Bans aloft in my left hand and I had the camera in my right hand. When you think about it, that's a really interesting scenario, because it's not often that the camera and the object being photographed are actually up in the air and therefore subject to a certain degree of human unsteadiness.

I shot about 24 frames, then reviewed each of them on my computer so I could check the overall clarity. I wanted one image to show the clouds through the lenses of Ray-Bans and a second image along the same lines, except that I wanted the details of the glasses (gold frames and the little plastic nose pieces) in sharp focus.

Photography - like any branch of art - can be as complicated as you make it, or as simple as you make it. Simplicity gets my vote - every time.