Morning Mimi

Mimi enjoys a spring sunrise from the upstairs window. I enjoy Mimi.

I enjoyed playing with the lens to achieve all the distortion of light and dark. I wanted the sense of the sun streaming into the window and washing over Mimi as if it was actually entering the house. I focused the camera’s sensor on Mimi’s darkest areas near her hip where there wasn’t even reflected light and the camera metered for a darker image, flashing out the highlights. I moved just enough into the path of the sun so it entered the lens, creating the path translucent circles.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get Mimi’s lovely curved tail; her continuous curving shape contrasts with the angularity of the window and cabinet, but coordinates with the sunspots and the softness of the lace curtain. I love those few old casement windows I still have—they have so much character with the wavy glass, the layers of caulking and paint.

I don’t shoot on any camera’s black and white setting, though—I find the camera’s sense of values to be different from mine, literally, and find they never compare to what I shot on black and white film. I’m always disappointed in the lack of midrange tones and I find the highlights are white, but even the darkest areas aren’t truly saturated. Instead, I experimented when I still had black and white film, shooting the same images with film and with my digital, trying settings then taking the color versions to PhotoShop to work with saturation levels and came up with a little procedure that works well to match on computer and in prints pretty much what I loved about black and white film.