Description

Recognize this building? It is Cinderella's Castle in Walt Disney World, Florida!

Technical Explanation

Just by changing your f-stop, you can create amazing effects. Sure, with today's paint programs you can cut out any object, silhouette it and then paste it onto any background you want. The fun here is doing these types of effects yourself, simply with an SLR camera.

As you can see, the sun is behind the castle. I used 200 ASA film and had my polarizer in place. I then brought my f/stop down to 16. That's about it. At a 16 f-stop, only the brightest light will shine through. The castle is cast in a shadow, due to insufficient light, but the sky, which was very bright that day (and hard to look at with the naked eye) is now brought down to the proper exposure. The sun is still washed out, but that is ok. I was able to block part of it with the top portion of the castle, thus eliminating the reflection of the aperture from appearing in the frame.