Day 3

My morning coffee

Good morning, gradient!

This picture was taken with my Nikon D3000 with the 18-55mm lens and a 4x closeup lens. The purpose of this shot was to show the gradient that developed after I poured milk into my morning coffee. I had an issue while shooting this that I wasn't able to overcome, though, I would later figure out how I could have fixed the problem. The kitchen window was giving me an excellent source of natural light as it faces slightly southeast. However, there is an obvious and distracting glare on the glass. I tried angling the glass this way and that, standing in front of the window and triggering the shot remotely, and even trying to use white t-shirt to diffuse the light. None of this seemed to work very well. By this time, the milk was already settled in the glass and the mixture wasn't as graduated. 

I shot this at 1/4th of a second at F4.5. I wanted to blur out the background slightly more than this aperture was giving me so that's why I attached the 4x closeup lens. I'm finding that the decreased focal length caused by the closeup lenses can come in handy. The lens was set at 18mm in order to get the vignetting from the 4x lens. 

There are many things that I don't like about this shot but they just weren't enough to dissuade me from using this particular photo. I was very interested in the usual gradient and loved the effect it had on (digital) film. I did try to recreate this shot later in the day when I realized I could have eliminated the glare by using a piece of white printer paper, but I just couldn't recreate the very distinct gradient. 

Although the major glare from the kitchen window kept the photo from being really great, I just couldn't pass up this unique shot. I'm a little irritated with myself that I couldn't have thought of a way to fix it before the milk settled but, hey, I hadn't had my coffee yet!