Low Key Still Life

[DES]

Messaging before the smartphone and the internet.

 

[JimFox]

This looks great! The candle is an awesome touch, though I think it would look even better if the candle was lit.

 

[AlanLichty]

Well staged composition and lighting. The antique books lend a nice mood to the scene. A fountain pen and/or inkwell would have been a nice touch but this works quite well as presented.

 

[DES]

Thanks Jim and Alan. Your suggestions are certainly appropriate (and appreciated). This was actually a lighting experiment to test an idea. I used a single LED lamp with barndoors on the front, but closed two of them down horizontally to a slit. It creates something like a diffraction pattern with multiple streams of light on the subject (2 on the candle and one on the desktop are visible). I could probably do something similar with a cucoloris. And some experts could possibly do it in post.