HIGH CONTRAST - SHINY OBJECTS

I love photographing shiny, curved objects such as metal, acrylic, and glass. These objects allow for a very high contrast appearance due to the reflective material's propensity to blow-out the highlights. This simply means that the bright reflective areas of shiny material will usually be pure white, with no color or tonal information. Most of the time this situation is undesirable; we almost always want at least a little bit of shade or color, even in the brightest highlights.




Instead of taking a normally exposed photo that has excessively white shiny reflections, why not dramatically underexpose the photo? This technique will increase the appearance of contrast, and will keep tonal information in the bright white sections of the photograph. This technique will also add to the "fine art" aspect of your image.

These sleek machines are Japanese bullet trains called Shinkansen, photographed in Tokyo Station using T-Max P3200 B&W film.
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