Light
Happy Valentine's Day to you. The month of, or the day of Love. For lovers we go out to eat with the one we love. But what does a photographer love? Shooting pictures is what I love to do. I wanted to take some time and do some macro photography along with the product. What better than my wedding band? The setup was easy; I used constant light. I use my Canon R5 with a 90mm macro lens on a tripod. I decided to do focus stacking, and here is what I came up with.
Wedding Band
For those of you who follow my Facebook page, I said there would be more, and here is the more.
To keep up with your photography skills, it always helps to go to workshops to learn and practice. Plus, I love working with professional models. This was no different. With the help of @Robertsphoto in Indianpolis,In and our model Afton, the class was on an environmental shoot. This class was terrific, for we took pictures in a 10-yard diameter and made the best using lighting. In the above photo, when I was going through the shooting, I could not help thinking this was a teacher escaping her class for a bit of downtime. So I told her to pretend that she was holding a wine glass, for I added this in photoshop to get the image my mind was thinking. The above picture was a 3 light shoot.
If you saw where these pictures were taken, you would say how? It’s a simple look at the background and asks whether it will benefit. If it helps, if it does not, don’t show it. As you know, I love flash photography and have a lot of fun using it. In this case, we used from one light all the way to 3 lights and again in a very small area. That is one way to help with the background. Another is the angles of the picture; another is putting the background in focus or not. (you thought it was just pint and click :) ) I bet we had about 10 shots, and all we needed to do was look.
I can’t say enough about working with a model. For me, it allows me to use my creativity and wait for the moment before clicking. I am a big believer in education and learning. No matter how much you know, you can always learn more. I love workshops for two reasons. First, I get to see things live, and last, I get a chance to see other photographers and learn from them. Photographers are like campers. We love what we do and love to talk.
The weekends in Ohio have been just about raining all the time. With that, it was time for practice time in my make-shift studio in the family room. This time I wanted to have the perfect photo for cutouts to be used in composites using a white background. I wanted the fly-away hairs and no blowout. So with that, I set up my seamless white paper. To keep it white, I used two 200-watt flashes to light it. I set up a chair about 8-10 feet from the white paper. For my key light, I used another flash with a soft box on it and had it about 5 ft away from the chair.
While crowded, the studio was set. Next was a subject. Yep, I could not convince my wife for this assignment, so I used myself. Messing up my hair so that I would have fly-away hair, it was time to practice. Then, it was time to practice using my phone to trigger the camera. I use a light meter when I am in the studio and begin practicing. I did overexpose background, underexpose, and wrote down what happened. I did the same thing with the key light. (main light). In the end, I came up with what I wanted and time for photoshop and tried different backgrounds and see if the cutout worked. It did. Next time, I need to buy a wig and use it on my mannequin head.
I watch a lot of different photography educations on the web. For example, one from Kelbyone was doing action figures with a background. When I watch these episodes, I list things that I want to do sometime. This was one of them that I wanted to do.
Stress Doll
I had this stress doll sitting on my shelf and decided to use my model. So I set up the doll using my living room and went with two lights. One is my key light to light him, and the second is with a blue gel to give a hint of blue in the shadow. The picture was taken, now the background. This I went on a stock photo site, and I knew I wanted a city. I found this nighttime picture of a town, and that was my composite.
This was a found project; in fact, I bought a toy for myself. I want to do this again. Maybe a beach photo with a toy. Not sure yet, but thinking about what I want to do with it. Now onto the next “I always wanted to do it shot”
There is so much out there to get documented for someone needing a picture. This could be the high stress of a wedding, maybe a landscape or travel, and the list can go on. One advantage of product photography is that you get a chance to think and then take the picture
Product Photography
When your present employer finds out that you are a product photographer, you got it; they ask if you could take some pictures. So that is what I did above for an upcoming show.
My setup was using white paper on a roll for the background and then placing the rolls about 8 feet away from the back of the roll. This time, instead of flash, I used 4 continuous lights. The significant advantage of constant light is that I can see where the light is and make adjustments if necessary. The other benefit of this project was color. The color had to match. With my background in the printing industry, I do a process that we call ICC profile. What is that? Make it simple it's a process to make sure everything is calibrated from camera to post-processing to print. I use X-Rite Color check for this process.
Why 4 lights? I used two of them to light the back of the paper to make it white. With no light, it would have been dark gray. Two to light the back even. The other two, I used one for the backlight of the roll and the other to light the front.
After taking the pictures of the single rolls, it was time to put them together. The advantage of the single is that it gives the client multiple ideas and uses how they want. In this case, they are using both single rolls and various rolls. I know because I am working with them on an advertising project.