In the Style of Sugimoto

After having done some research into Hiroshi Sugimoto (see my blog of 22^nd February), I decided that I would create my own Sugimoto cinema-style shot. But instead of a cinema I thought I would use our TV and lounge.

I set up the shot so that the TV would light up the fireplace and soft furniture. This meant that the TV is off centre in the picture. I was shooting with an Olympus E-410 DSLR on a tripod with the lens set at 14mm (28mm lens 35mm equivalent). I chose the smallest aperture (f22) and slowest film speed (ISO 100). The camera was set to manual focus. I did a number of exposures, but found that I was getting the effect I was looking for with an exposure of about 3 minutes. I shot the scene in RAW so I would able to make further adjustments to light levels in Photoshop.

When I downloaded the pictures onto my laptop, I was pretty pleased with the results, but with a bit of adjustment with Photoshop I found I could do even better. So the final light levels are about what they would have been had the exposure been for 4 minutes. I like the final result, but it doesn’t quite have the same eerie feeling as the Sugimoto original. So I thought that I could improve things by killing the colour and printing it in black and white. Both colour and B&W are shown below. Which one do you like? Which one gives that spooky feeling best? Answers to my blog please.