Drawing Subjects out of Darkness
Contributors' Picks from Around the WorldPublished in X-Ray Magazine
Issue 134, July, 2025
Text and Photos by Michael Rothschild
If light is the photographer’s friend, what does that make darkness? Yes, it is the absence of light, but dark negative spaces can be extremely effective. Darkness is a useful tool, drawing a subject out of the gloom, emphasizing details painted sparingly with faint flickering sources of illumination. A candle. The full moon. A lit match. And underwater, the sharp beam of a dive light revealing the hidden treasures of a reef at night, the silty belly of a shipwreck, or the treacherous recesses of a cave.
In figure 1, the diver peers around the corner of a sunken freighter. Daylight is spilling in from his right as his eyes follow the beam of his can light, away from the sun. Figure 2 shows an ascending diver following the anchor line, which brightens as it rises to the surface. Figure 3 shows the power of the silhouette – two instantly recognizable shapes framed by a dark cavern inlet. And the diver in Figure 4 is crawling out of the shadows of a giant engine standing 15 feet above the sand, nearly all that is left of a steamship that burned to the waterline, just before the end of the 19th century.
In figure 1, the diver peers around the corner of a sunken freighter. Daylight is spilling in from his right as his eyes follow the beam of his can light, away from the sun. Figure 2 shows an ascending diver following the anchor line, which brightens as it rises to the surface. Figure 3 shows the power of the silhouette – two instantly recognizable shapes framed by a dark cavern inlet. And the diver in Figure 4 is crawling out of the shadows of a giant engine standing 15 feet above the sand, nearly all that is left of a steamship that burned to the waterline, just before the end of the 19th century.
