Home»Crystal Ball 2016

THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTOS
I love trying new things with my photography. A couple years back, I noticed some other photographers shooting their scene through crystal balls. It seemed like a really cool effect but it wasn't until 2016 that I decided to create my own collection of crystal ball images. As you can see in the behind-the-scenes photos at the end of this gallery, the effect is created by shooting thru an actual glass ball. The ball has to be held in place in front of the camera and then the shot is composed to take into account both the ball and the background elements. There is some editing in Photoshop: I have to remove the stand that holds the ball in place. And then I flip the image in the ball to match the background since it actually comes thru inverted. I also adjust the size of the ball to suit the image itself. As you can see, I took my crystal ball on a bunch of different shoots in 2016. I used the ball to capture everything from the Fall foliage in Upstate New York to the Barnegat Lighthouse on the Jersey shore to the Manhattan skyline as seen from Brooklyn. All-in-all, this is a fun and sometimes challenging (I dropped my ball a few times - luckily it didn't break!) way to create a series of images.