location 7 - Bottle on the Tracks


How I took this shot

I took this shot just after sunrise. I went to take a timelapse of the sunrise, it was very overcast on the day. As the sunrise did not work I decided to go to the train track as I might get an interesting photo. I found a bottle at the side of the tracks. I put the bottle on the track to get a shot of the bottle in focus and the tracks leading into the background out of focus. The light in this image was very interesting; the angle of the sun was very low but the clouds worked as a diffuser. The light illuminates the tracks making them almost white against the close to black rocks. This gives the image high contrast. The light and shadow inside the bottle shows the shape of the bottle. If this shot had been taken later on in the day, I think it would not have the same effect. The shallow depth of field is important to the image. The top of the bottle is in focus and it stands out even more because of the bokeh (out of focus background) behind it.

The trees in the background are distorted. This distortion is because I used a vintage film lens for this shot. Similar distortions to this are used in petzval lenses and this gives a swirling bokeh, this can be used as an interesting effect in portraits. Many old lenses have a similar effect to this and are very cheap. This distortion of older lenses is seen as a weakness, but can be used to interesting creative effect. This image was shot with 28mm f2.8.