Chiaroscuro
A project where street scenes are cast into emphatic lights and shadows, in part inspired by the Renaissance painting technique, whence the name. It is one way to make the most out of a sunny day with harsh light. This technique of shooting is far from novel, and often goes by the names "exposing for the highlights", or "exposing to the left" - where the basic idea is to dramatically underexpose the shot, whereby large portions of the frame fall into the "shadows", with almost a geometric elegance. This can be used to emphasize or isolate a subject, at times leading to serendipitous results. These are some of my own experiments with this idea. [ Siddhartha Mukherjee ]