White on white - taken with a grain of salt

for "get pushed" this week, Michelle (@tryeveryday) challenged me to do some "white on white" photography... yeesh! who knew it would be so tricky? anyway, i think it's better than my attempt back in February, although not by much... i just canNOT get the light to cooperate... i did a fair bit of fiddling in Lightroom and PSEm but still not entirely happy with it...

street shot for november list in my main album:
http://365project.org/northy/365/2012-11-02


Thank you so much for the lovely views and comments on my bench shot from yesterday... this week has been a bear and I am very behind in looking at everyone's photos and commenting... I expect to have time over the weekend to get caught up...

[☠northy]

@tryeveryday dang! this was so NOT easy! still not sure what i am doing wrong... guess i'm not bouncing the light around properly ;p thank you for the challenge - it was an excellent exercise - even if i did not succeed at it, i learned an awful lot!

[Maggiemae]

These are salt crystals and I think its like ice - difficult to pin down! Good for you to try!

[Caryn]

I like it...I think you succeeded!

[Aaron]

Excellent subject and focus! I usually add a little blue post process; it really brings out the whites :)

[☠northy]

@grizzlysghost well dang!!!! blue?? i can totally see why that would work but it did not occur to me in the least... i did consider processing using nik silver efex, but decided that would be too much like cheating... ;p

[KWind]

I think it's a great example of white on white!! WEll done.

[aurorajane]

Nice work Northy :)

[Lyn]

Nice job, Northy! I think you were really thinking out of the box for this - what a great idea to use the salt.

[Amaya Williams]

Very subtle--had to spend some time with this photo which must mean it's a success. I admire the way you keep pushing yourself to get the best shot possible.

[Karen H]

Interesting, things I don't want to be pushed to do

[Michelle Blackford]

I love this one...and your tags are still cracking me up!! I like the way the light is reflecting off the spoon.

[Tiara]

nicely done

[Jeff Walker]

but you succeeded... the subject and background are white.

[Kerri]

Cool

[Lyn Todd]

Shooting white on white is really hard! It is the same as shooting snow scenes (ala http://www.pixiq.com/article/how-to-exposure-for-snow). Did you use spot metering?

[Tracy]

Whoop Whoop! you did it :D fantastic work!

[Sharon Lee]

Ths is such a hard subject, you are doing real well

[Peter de Graaff]

Hooray. It works and is quite unique

[Humphrey Hippo]

Yay! That works really well. I tried salt grains & they came out grey. Nice job.

[❀ Lynn]

I think it works....does for me anyhow!

[☠northy]

@ltodd ok very quietly admitting that i really don't know how to do this... off to read the link... tx!m

[☠northy]

@tracywilliams @jsw0109 @humphreyhippo tx guys... but to me, there is still too much "not white" in there...

[Jeff Walker]

@northy there has to be enough contrast ("not white" for the subject to actually show up... that's half the point of white on white. If the subject is white and the background is white, and there's no shadow cast by the subject onto the background, then you've nailed it. I do think I see what you're talking about though... Once I viewed it large, the background looks like it could be whiter than it is. You could always crop it so that corner is gone, and then it would be as white on white as you can get without losing the subject

[Lisa Pouncy]

Salt, a notoriously difficult subject to shoot...well I certainly found it really hard!! I think this is a great attempt actually. Certainly is WoW :o) xx