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gizmodo.com: Shadows. They're ghoulish entities that come and goes with the whims of the sun. But shadow puppets are what happens when Man harnesses the sun, or artificial light, and creates life of his own.
I'm sure it would be a challenge to photograph shadows because sometimes light effects can be tricky to represent in camera. Shadows and light have an incredible capacity to mesmerize for some reason. I believe the energy and intangibility of the medium account for this.
For various reasons, I feel that Gizmodo's content has gone downhill over the past several years. That being said, their shooting challenge column is always excellent. The challenges that are presented always result in some awesome submission photos, and this one is no different. Shadow puppets are a pretty cool topic, although I can't help but wonder if proposing a shooting challenge where shadows in general were the main focus would yield a more varied and interesting assortment of photos.
This seems really cool! Obviously it is going to be a challenge because taking pictures of shadows is hard to do. It's funny that this article was posted because I've actually been doing a lot of research on shadow puppets because I think they are quite beautiful. I actually have quite a few Malaysian shadow puppets at home and I think the detail that is put in them is so intricate and amazing!!!
Our foundations class just did a project about puppetry, and three of the four groups did the type of puppetry featured in the photo at the top of the article, Wayang Kulit puppetry. The style itself is quite complex, but the projects we presented in class were quite amazing. The use of shape was extremely important, not only in defining the characters, but also in adding to the beauty of the theatre. This visual element is most abundant in the Tree of Life character, which is the spade-shaped shadow in the photo above. Many of these productions also use color, which isn't featured here, but can add an extra element to the production. I want to see more Wayang Kulit performed, because our projects had no money and original scripts, and were pretty amazing, and seeing a professional version would be really cool.
This sounds like a fun challenge, if I had my hands on some awesome puppets like in the photo I would definitely do something about it! This reminds me of a musical I worked on in high school. It was actually my favorite musical, I think it is really beautiful, its is called, Kismet. In our production of it we used shadow puppets behind a full stage curtain to re-enact a parade with various animals. Shadow puppets are really great when playing with scale and the more detail the better. It is a great effect that I never really see in a show at CMU. We could really do a magnificent job.
This article seems to be hinting at some really cool topics like shadow puppets and how to take photos of shadows, but it never actually gets in to talking about these topics. Instead it just goes over contest rules. I don't see why anyone would get excited about this contest because the article doesn't tell me why it will be awesome. I really wanted this article to tell me some tips and tricks about photographing shadow puppets. Or maybe how to make really nice shadow puppets. I was very disappointed because the bulk of this article was telling me about details of how to submit a photo.
Pretty much everyone made shadow puppets with their hands as kids- something about it is just so fascinating, especially to children. The picture in the article is a great example of how this can "grow up" to become a sophisticated form of art. This is part of what makes puppets in general so interesting to deal with- we all play with them as kids, but if used correctly they can be very artistic and adult. In regards to this contest specifically- I'd really like to see the results, and I agree with Ben that a contest involving just shadows in general might have some interesting photos as well.
Shadow puppets are the coolest. Using shadow as a medium allows for SO many illusions of perspective, size, and shape. The most magical part of a shadow sculpture is how apparently seperate, static shapes can suddenly move and blend together. Because photography only captures a moment, I imagine it would be really challenging to capture such a dynamic sort of art in a still image. Here are links to some of my favorite shadow sculptures!
This is really awesome. My arcade group is actually going to be working with shadow puppets in our project. Too bad the contest already happened, we could have submitted some photos. Its funny that the idea and process of creating a shadow puppet show is intrinsically really simple, but at the same time it can be extremely difficult to get exactly what you want. I think some of the big challenges we are facing with our project is how and where to light it in order to get the shadows and shapes that we want. we have multiple scenes that we want to place shadows in but very limited space for lighting. Fingers crossed that everything will work the way we want it!
This is such a cool idea. Creating a contest type submission in order to encourage the creation of great shadow puppet art. Shadow puppets have very very small limitations. You can create so many things, and its a wonderful way to tell a story! I would love to explore shadow puppetry in my theatre career at some point. Since it's so simple to do, I know I'll get to do it.
From when we were taking pictures of our small boxes for Susan, my last box cast some interesting shadows on the wall behind it, I took some pictures of those shadows in additions of the ones of the box. Unlike what the article says, I think that especially with taking pictures of shadows on a surface, you need finer control over the exposure of your images, at least more than auto-expose, and playing around with the white balance settings can yield some very interesting results.
Just this past January I had the pleasure of taking pictures of a friend's theatrical piece who had incorporated shadow puppets. It was quite the challenge, but after playing with the lighting, the cameral angle, and the focus, it had quite an appealing result. I think that shadow puppets are amazing things to include into a production, of any type. And if they can be done properly, there are a multitude of different ways to use and portray shadow puppets.
That is pretty neat, although I am not interested in submitting an entry to the challenge, it was cool to look through the pictures of shadow puppets on the pages the article links to. It is a little ridiculous how many shapes can be created just by using the human hands to block light. It makes me wonder who figured out exactly what combination of finger positions created an elephant or a lion, and how they went about doing it.
This is actually really cool. This makes me think about what PigPen said about knowing exactly what type of flashlight from which store works the best for each thing they wanted to accomplish. I would find it hard to be able to take these photos just because its always hard to shoot in the dark but because of Susan Tsu's box projects and the photos we had to take i feel i would be better able to tackle this challenge.
14 comments:
I'm sure it would be a challenge to photograph shadows because sometimes light effects can be tricky to represent in camera. Shadows and light have an incredible capacity to mesmerize for some reason. I believe the energy and intangibility of the medium account for this.
For various reasons, I feel that Gizmodo's content has gone downhill over the past several years. That being said, their shooting challenge column is always excellent. The challenges that are presented always result in some awesome submission photos, and this one is no different. Shadow puppets are a pretty cool topic, although I can't help but wonder if proposing a shooting challenge where shadows in general were the main focus would yield a more varied and interesting assortment of photos.
This seems really cool! Obviously it is going to be a challenge because taking pictures of shadows is hard to do. It's funny that this article was posted because I've actually been doing a lot of research on shadow puppets because I think they are quite beautiful. I actually have quite a few Malaysian shadow puppets at home and I think the detail that is put in them is so intricate and amazing!!!
This seems like a pretty cooooooool challenge!
Our foundations class just did a project about puppetry, and three of the four groups did the type of puppetry featured in the photo at the top of the article, Wayang Kulit puppetry. The style itself is quite complex, but the projects we presented in class were quite amazing. The use of shape was extremely important, not only in defining the characters, but also in adding to the beauty of the theatre. This visual element is most abundant in the Tree of Life character, which is the spade-shaped shadow in the photo above. Many of these productions also use color, which isn't featured here, but can add an extra element to the production. I want to see more Wayang Kulit performed, because our projects had no money and original scripts, and were pretty amazing, and seeing a professional version would be really cool.
This sounds like a fun challenge, if I had my hands on some awesome puppets like in the photo I would definitely do something about it! This reminds me of a musical I worked on in high school. It was actually my favorite musical, I think it is really beautiful, its is called, Kismet. In our production of it we used shadow puppets behind a full stage curtain to re-enact a parade with various animals. Shadow puppets are really great when playing with scale and the more detail the better. It is a great effect that I never really see in a show at CMU. We could really do a magnificent job.
This article seems to be hinting at some really cool topics like shadow puppets and how to take photos of shadows, but it never actually gets in to talking about these topics. Instead it just goes over contest rules. I don't see why anyone would get excited about this contest because the article doesn't tell me why it will be awesome. I really wanted this article to tell me some tips and tricks about photographing shadow puppets. Or maybe how to make really nice shadow puppets. I was very disappointed because the bulk of this article was telling me about details of how to submit a photo.
Pretty much everyone made shadow puppets with their hands as kids- something about it is just so fascinating, especially to children. The picture in the article is a great example of how this can "grow up" to become a sophisticated form of art. This is part of what makes puppets in general so interesting to deal with- we all play with them as kids, but if used correctly they can be very artistic and adult. In regards to this contest specifically- I'd really like to see the results, and I agree with Ben that a contest involving just shadows in general might have some interesting photos as well.
Shadow puppets are the coolest. Using shadow as a medium allows for SO many illusions of perspective, size, and shape. The most magical part of a shadow sculpture is how apparently seperate, static shapes can suddenly move and blend together. Because photography only captures a moment, I imagine it would be really challenging to capture such a dynamic sort of art in a still image. Here are links to some of my favorite shadow sculptures!
http://www.thisismarvelous.com/postImages/Tim_Noble_Sue_Webster_shadow_sculpture-normal.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rx0eN29gs
This is really awesome. My arcade group is actually going to be working with shadow puppets in our project. Too bad the contest already happened, we could have submitted some photos. Its funny that the idea and process of creating a shadow puppet show is intrinsically really simple, but at the same time it can be extremely difficult to get exactly what you want. I think some of the big challenges we are facing with our project is how and where to light it in order to get the shadows and shapes that we want. we have multiple scenes that we want to place shadows in but very limited space for lighting. Fingers crossed that everything will work the way we want it!
This is such a cool idea. Creating a contest type submission in order to encourage the creation of great shadow puppet art. Shadow puppets have very very small limitations. You can create so many things, and its a wonderful way to tell a story! I would love to explore shadow puppetry in my theatre career at some point. Since it's so simple to do, I know I'll get to do it.
From when we were taking pictures of our small boxes for Susan, my last box cast some interesting shadows on the wall behind it, I took some pictures of those shadows in additions of the ones of the box. Unlike what the article says, I think that especially with taking pictures of shadows on a surface, you need finer control over the exposure of your images, at least more than auto-expose, and playing around with the white balance settings can yield some very interesting results.
Just this past January I had the pleasure of taking pictures of a friend's theatrical piece who had incorporated shadow puppets. It was quite the challenge, but after playing with the lighting, the cameral angle, and the focus, it had quite an appealing result. I think that shadow puppets are amazing things to include into a production, of any type. And if they can be done properly, there are a multitude of different ways to use and portray shadow puppets.
That is pretty neat, although I am not interested in submitting an entry to the challenge, it was cool to look through the pictures of shadow puppets on the pages the article links to. It is a little ridiculous how many shapes can be created just by using the human hands to block light. It makes me wonder who figured out exactly what combination of finger positions created an elephant or a lion, and how they went about doing it.
This is actually really cool. This makes me think about what PigPen said about knowing exactly what type of flashlight from which store works the best for each thing they wanted to accomplish. I would find it hard to be able to take these photos just because its always hard to shoot in the dark but because of Susan Tsu's box projects and the photos we had to take i feel i would be better able to tackle this challenge.
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