Concepts. Syncopation and Transition

When I studied design, my favourite task was conceptual composition or the art of composition (the only branch of modern art I can actually tolerate), which is also the basis of creative photography.
What I love most about illustrating a concept is the intellectual game that it provides — as with solving creative puzzles, it takes a lot of lateral thinking, and the more disparate the ideas you manage to associate seem, the smarter you look.

Syncopation — a shift of accent in a passage or composition that occurs when a normally weak beat is stressed, in other words, a shift of attention to the secondary subject (in this case from the object to its shadow).

Syncopation. Shadow of a glass vase. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Random Picks. Time, Seeds and Regular Hexagons

'As the waves make toward the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.' — William Shakespeare

Reflections in a clock. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Lost Wedding Ring

Matrimony, like a dip in the sea, first stimulates, then chills. But once out of the water the call of the ocean lures the bather to another plunge.

Golden wedding ring lost on a sandy beach and seashell
(© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Shades of White

When I studied classical painting I learned that there's no such thing in nature as absolutely pure white and black colours (which is also true for any other hue), but rather the play of tones, tints and shades created by the indirect light bouncing of  surrounding objects. It may be cold or warm, depending on the environment lighting and colour scale of the scene itself.

Shades of white. White quartz pebble on ceramic.
(© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Concepts. Addiction

"Arm-wrestling" with an addiction.

The bottle wins.

Losing the battle against the bottle. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Light and Shade. Stone and Crystals

Some of the most beautiful effects in nature are created when two or more textures or materials, especially contrasting ones, meet. Crystals and stones, for example, fall into the same category, and yet they exhibit different qualities.

Quartz, amethyst and rock. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Reflections in Brown and Blue

Some of the most beautiful light effects are created by the play of the sunrays in the water. Since water is a transparent medium, it renders an infinite number of palettes depending on the colours of the surrounding objects and the incident light.
These two feathers were drifting by in perfect sync, they propped each other thus staying in balance... like a perfect couple.

Two drifting feathers. (© 2013 LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Geometry of Shadows

Back in my university days my favourite part of Descriptive Geometry (although I basically slept through the course, I still managed to pass the exam with flying colours) was its application for construction of projected shadows and perspective. Shadows provide a great deal of nuances and undertones both in painting and photography, with the former being superior to the latter in terms of subtlety, thus creating atmospheres and moods.

In photography, which is essentially recording patterns of light, shade, and colour (while painting is the individual’s interpretation of these patterns, hence its unparalleled subtlety), "highlights" and "shadows" are the brightest and darkest parts of a scene or image. The challenge for a photographer is to adjust photographic exposure (unless you want special effects) so that the film or sensor, which has limited dynamic range, records detail without clipping the shadows and highlights.

Geometry of shadows. Wicker chair
(© 2012 LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Geometry of Perspective

Perspective, in the context of vision and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their spatial attributes. Perspective foreshortening is essential to our depth perception (among other depth cues) —the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions and the distance of an object.
Perspective foreshortening is caused by the way the human eye perceives the world due to its physical structure (for example, excitation of cone cells in the retina), and to the optical geometry of light rays (due to the nature of light itself).
As objects become more distant, they appear smaller because their visual angle decreases. The eye is at the vertex of a triangle with the object at its base, so the greater the distance of the object from the eye, the greater is the height of this triangle, and the less the visual angle (Euclidean geometry).

Canopied footway in perspective
(© 2012 LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Life in Inanimate Things. Light and Shade in Still Lifes.

Lighting can change the mood of the scene or, in this case, still life.  The same still life can express different atmospheres depending on the lighting.
Rather gloomy.

Still life with honeycomb candle.
(© 2011 LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Places.

Has it ever happened to you, you see a place and suddenly feel sad for no apparent reason?
Well, none of the following scenes actually filled my heart with sadness, but rather the opposite is true. Anyway, every place has its unique spirit, mood or vibes and can evoke a wide range of emotions.

Here's an example of an unconventional way of life. Mind, there're no children living here.

Unconventional Lifestyle
(© 2011 LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Life in Inanimate Things. Abstracts

Inanimate objects can be full of life, you can arrange them so that they express an idea, mood or concept through the play of light, colour and shadow. They can even help you conjure up magic scenes...

Glass dog with a ball. (© 2011 LightColourShade. All rights reserved)