I had no idea if I could come up with something for this contest, and was still thinking about what I wanted to do, and then I looked up from my desk and said, "Hey. Black crate shelves. White wall. Shadows. Aha!"
I did use some PS filters to emphasize the B&W nature -- grayscale (mostly to take out shadow colour artefacts), and then applying a pure black and white duotone to the picture. A slight upwards adjustment in contrast was the final adjustment before I exported back to JPG. The shot is not cropped; that's the angle and distance I took it at.
I took ten shots in all before being satisfied with the shadow angle -- another one of the shots came close, but this one was better. The light is the one on my room, aided a bit by the hall light (the door is just to the right of the shot); there was no flash used.
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The tough part was trying to get the shadow so that it seemed to 'grow' from the crate, which was my intent. Different angles gave a markedly different shadow, unsurprisingly. I also didn't have much physical room to play with -- there's only about a foot and a half between those and my desk -- which definitely limited where I could take the shot from and not get something else in the frame.
I do think I could move it somewhat, though, which if I decide to try to do another version I will. If nothing else, I suspect I could get the center point to be the top right corner of the crate and keep the shadow angle.
Oh, regarding lighting... I did take this without flash because the shadow is eradicated by flash, but my camera does not do low-light well, unfortunately. Between that and the fact that I didn't really have much leeway about where to put the lamp I think a try for better lighting conditions will have to wait. I might be able to get a brighter lamp or bulb, but I don't currently have either. Both these things are fixable in time, though -- the new camera is already on the 'save up for' list.
Clearly if I'm going to take a lot of photos, I need a larger apartment so I have more room to arrange things. :)
I agree with the statement that a little lighter might have been better, but I think for me the weakest part of this picture is the framing. The crate moves to the center of the picture left-to-right; vertically, it goes to the center of the picture at its right edge and 2/3 height at its left edge. The shadow escapes out of the picture, leaving the whole thing feeling cut off and mis-angled.
Without trying several shots, I'm not sure of the answer, but here are some possibilities:
Back out from the thing to pick up more of it; leave the angle as-is.
Lift the left side of the picture, changing the angle so the top of the crate is straight (at the center of the picture) and giving the shadow enough room to fit. This would un-straighten the right edge of the crate and might push its shadow out-of-view, however.
Tighten the picture in, lifting at the same time, so that the top edge of the crate remains at the same angle/placement, less of the crate is shown, and the shadow is cut off both top and right.
Alternately, move the picture left, showing more crate (taking it to the 2/3 mark horizontally) and similarly cutting the shadow, though I suspect this would make the crate entirely to overpowering.
Try the whole thing at an angle, with the point of the crate occupying the center of the photo and the lines of it on a diagonal from the bottom or the side of the photo.
Just some musing - different things you might play around with to see what the effect would be.
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