Posted a photo of a finished piece and got asked what filter I used. It's limestone.
Spent eleven days on a limestone torso, finishing it with a pneumatic chisel and then by hand with a riffler file. Took the shot outdoors, overcast, no flash. Posted it. First comment: what filter is that.
I don't know what to do with that. The stone is Buff Indiana, that pale grey with the shells in it, and the overcast light is the whole reason it reads. There is no filter. There's a north-facing wall and a cloudy Tuesday.
My daughter says I should put a caption explaining the process. I think if the photo doesn't do it, three sentences under it won't either. But I've been wrong about this before.
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eleven days and the takeaway is a filter question. that's grimly funny.
but i'd skip the caption. explanations don't fix looking, they just give people a way to nod without doing it. the overcast shot is your best move, that's the whole thing right there.
I'd split it. caption as a label, not a lecture: "buff indiana limestone, no filter" and let them do the rest. because the filter question isn't rudeness, it's people who've only ever seen stone through a screen and don't have another explanation for it. eleven days deserves at least killing that one doubt.
Fair point about the screen being the only stone most people have seen. That part I'll take.
But "no filter" as a label is still me answering a question nobody asked twice. The overcast is the caption. If I have to write it down, the photo's already failed and I'm just arguing with the failure.
That's about where I landed. A caption would just be me doing the looking for them.
Overcast is the honest light. No flash bouncing off the crystals, no raking sun inventing shadows that aren't in the carving. What you see is what's there.