Off Into the Sunset - Day 28 of 365

Last night delicate reindeer, tonight a sturdy horse. This is a picture of a horse sculpture that we have in our living room. A few years ago, my wife saw this cast sculpture at the Home Depot Expo (I miss that store) and she just had to have it. I'm someone who can't stand nick-nacks around the house, so I'm concerned that I may run out of things to take pictures of eventually. But, for tonight, we have the horse from my mantle.

I was in a much better mood tonight, so, instead of just taking a picture of the horse with a plain background, I decided to try something that I had been considering trying for a while now -- using my LCD TV/Monitor as a background. I have my computer hooked up to the TV, so, for the background, I found a nice picture of a sunset here on flickr (I had to search for one than had a creative commons license so I could use it). I settled on this wonderful picture of a Bedruthan sunset by Ennor, that is located: HERE

To get the shot, I set the horse on a box a few feet in front of the TV and I used my 50mm 1.4d lens in order to capture the horse clearly, while blurring out the background (I really just wanted the sunset for the colors). I lit the horse with a Nikon SB-600 that was set up about 2 feet above and camera left of the horse's head. In order to avoid over exposing the horse with the lens open wide enough to blur the background, I had to turn the flash to it's minimum setting. Once I got the horse exposed how I wanted it, I played with the camera's shutter speed until I liked the brightness of the background (the longer the shutter is open, the brighter the background).

I increased the the contrast a bit and upped the saturation once I got to the picture to the computer. The contrast made the horse look a little more interesting and the saturation made the colors pop even more (it didn't take much, the original photo is stunning).

Overall, I had fun taking the shot, but I think it came out a little fake looking. Maybe I'll have to try this TV technique out in the future to see if I can get it better.