Cuppa Coffee

It is an overcast afternoon as I begin my observation here at the coffee shop.  With the threat of rain, I choose my location wisely and sit underneath a tin roof.  Unlike before, I've decided to place my subject before me, rather than look around for one.  Today my subject is my half full/empty coffee mug with a thin, wooden stirring stick.  It is blue, but has a red/purple quality that the camera does not seem keen to pick up.  I have placed it on a dark wood table, atop a dirty white napkin.  One of the first things I notice is how reflective the mug is.  The rim of the mug lips out slightly, and since the light is sort of diffused through the clouds and hitting in every direction, the outer most protrusions of the rim have a little specular reflection on either side of the cup.  the handle of the mug also has a little reflection on the interior of its curvature inside of the shadow.  The best example of this mug's reflectivity, however, is the body of the cup itself.  Where the bottom meets the napkin, there is an obvious mirror reflection of this napkin on the cup's face.  I move my hand around to see just how much reflects into the cup's body and at a short distance my hand also reflects into the cup. Although it is close to noon, there are no apparent shadows because of how soft the light is.  Only about a minute into my observation, the threat of rain becomes true.  For a couple of minutes we are hit by a hard rain from a side angle.  I take out my colorful umbrella to protect my observation area (and myself!) from getting drenched.  I keep my umbrella covering us for the remainder of my observation period, but for the last 10 minutes the rain is more gentle.  The red from my umbrella does not make for too much of a color change on the mug, but it does keep the light extra soft.  Although the umbrella is opaque in appearance, the surrounding light passes through and diffuses without casting any real shadow.  By the end of my observation, little has changed from the beginning outside of the rain.  However, the overall softness of the light through the clouds makes the changes almost entirely unapparent.

Cuppa Coffee from Lady Subrosa on Vimeo.