P52:7 | Backlighting

It’s P52 time again! This week’s prompt was Backlighting. I love the beautiful glow of backlit summer portraits, but that wasn’t going to happen this week, with a foot of snow on the ground and a mix of gloomy clouds and harsh winter sun. Luckily, there are several other ways you can go with backlighting. Silhouettes and backlit food photography were two of the first ideas that came to mind. But then the kids and I went to spend the weekend with my parents.

Am I the only one who gets totally creeped out whenever I sleep away from home? Even at my parents’ house, I can’t shake the heebie-jeebies, especially since I’m usually the last one to go to bed there. The window in my room was backlit by a security light, and I lay there for a long time one night imagining all the sinister shadows that might slide across that window. Seriously, I’m worse than a child.

But then the idea for this image popped into my mind. I had been playing with toy photography that night, and one of the toys I had photographed was my old Fisher Price castle dragon. He wasn’t nearly impressive enough to pull this off, but I was pretty sure we had a Lego dragon at home that would be perfect. I even managed to talk Mr. I Hate Pictures into helping me out with it, but only by promising a five-minute shoot followed by Jello.

This is a composite of four shots—a shot of the Lego dragon (I believe this is Smaug from a Hobbit set, if you were wondering), a shot of the blinds backlit by the afternoon sun (because our neighborhood security lights don’t light the blinds enough), a shot of my son backlit by a nightlight, and a free texture from From the Treetop Photography.

If you want to check out some more interpretations of Backlighting, continue on around our blog circle. Next up this week is Trish at Autumn Leaves Photography.