Ascension the sculpture

Artist Michael Dillon, based in Crabapple, Georgia, is known for architectural ironworks and distinctive sculptures.  He created “Ascension” for the Duluth Gateway Art Project  with the financial support of AGCO, an agriculture industry conglomerate.

The best pictures I saw of “Ascension” were in a gallery by Violet Key, a photographer in Suwanee, GA.  She has some very creative frames taken a few moments before the official presentation of “Ascension” on 4/19/2014.

My idea was to think up new settings or ways to display this piece such as inserting humans into the frame, and twilight and strobist treatments.  This blog is about my first attempts.

According to the Photographers’ Ephemeris (above), the sculpture is oriented NW (the tail) to SE (the head) by the major axis of the elliptical roundabout.  This means the tail can possibly catch direct sun for a few minutes at dusk and light up the rusty plow and highlight shiny surfaces.

I wasn’t very successful with that sun on this first trip, but the roundabout is a great place to lurk.  As the sun faded, I tried to catch cars and passengers negotiating their turns.

After dusk I used two strobes with small softboxes to light the underside.   The Nikon Creative Lighting System allowed me to vary power settings remotely however I often was at full power.  I was the only person available for moving & testing the lights in each set-up.  A better solution would involve two assistants, more powerful lights, booms & stands, power, money…..