Back in the days when I worked as a radio DJ, one of my favorite aspects of the job was that we could "invent" a situation in the minds of our listeners. By using sound effects, we could transport listeners to sunny islands, or a busy street, or to a stadium. One time we actually fooled our listeners into believing we were flying a helicopter around town, dropping turkeys into yards for Thanksgiving!
Photography can create the same sort of illusions, and that's one of the things about this hobby that is very appealing and interesting to me. Many of us use photography to capture a moment in time, to try to replicate a scene as we saw it as a sort of keepsake of that slice of time. I certainly do that all the time, particularly as I watch my 5-year-old daughter grow up!
But another aspect of photography that can be fun is to invent a scene or situation. I tried my hand at this with the "Lighting" challenge. I thought it would be cool to create a concert/bar atmosphere in my basement. In a sense, this particular shot brought together my old world behind a microphone, and photography:
I thought I'd share the set-up I used for this shot, since my basement is definitely not a concert stage. I used a black backdrop, and a few colored lights to surround the microphone. And for some added realism, I used a fog machine to swirl a little smoke around. I'd really be interested in seeing some of the other set-ups folks have used to create a "theater of mind" scenario for shots!
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