Revealing Light

There are two ways to think of photographing an object - one way is to photograph it for what it is. The other way is to photograph it for what else it can be. if you use "soft" light, as I did here, you can see every detail in the object, in this case, a piece of driftwood. If you use bright sunlight, the object will have dark shadows, and may be more dramatic in its appearance, and it is liable to look like "something else." So I chose this soft, "revealing light" for this piece of wood. One way to get this soft light is to photograph it on an overcast day, as I did here, and the light comes from every direction, and eliminates all shadows.
This piece of driftwood is interesting - it comes from the house next door. It has been sitting on the ground in a garden next to the house, and I had seen that it was there, but I never stopped to look at it closely. Today I had to move it to put my ladder where it was, and that's when I realized what a beautiful object it is. Trying to decide what to use for a background was not easy. I considered the lawn, and then the driveway. An hour later it occurred to me that fresh dirt would be great, so I raked a spot in the garden at home, and brought this over to my house to do the photograph. I think that it is the perfect background. What beautiful form it has!