back once again

I just realized that four months have passed since my last entry ... whoops ...

I have been up to some shenanigans ... I have been reading up on The Strobist blog off and on for a while now.  The latest Strobist inspiration has been the DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio.  Read about it here:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

While this "studio-in-a -box" is great for the diffuse wrap around lighting for products ala Amazon product shots, I find I prefer a more dramatic lighting effect.  So inspired by the DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio, I set up a box with only one diffusion panel.  I used a sheet of parchment paper from Costco.  Then I set up a black "back drop" - using a long sheet of printer paper from a roll Karol has.  Painted it black.  Then painted a piece of cardboar black for use on the side opposite of the diffusion panel as a light absorber (what's the opposite of reflector?).  So now I can control reflections and spill light pretty effectively.  Here is an early attempt:


I guess I like lighting on one and only one plane - light only on the subject, and everything else going black.  I like the illusion that the subject is "floating" in space.  I suppose this is an extreme form of isolation.

Here is another shot of my Leatherman:


I find that this lighting effectively isolates the subject.

Here is a beer shot in the the set up:


Great Divide Brewing Company Rumble IPA rocks!  Still  need to work out how not to lose some of the copy on the bottle in the shadows.

For these strobe shots, I picked up a couple Pocket Wizard Plus-X tranceivers.  These little gems really make shooting with strobes a pleasure.  When I was using the PC cord set up, I found that when changing camera position often messed up the cable connections and therefore the strobe would not fire.  I found myself having to check cable connections constantly.  With the Pocket Wizards, I can almost forget about stobe triggering.

And speaking of strobes, I realized that I have had my older strobe for almost 30 years.  It is starting to get broken in ... :-)  I wonder if the lens age is imparting a color cast on the light it throws, but why worry about marginal details now, after all this time?

Now that I have set up the DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio, I will be shooting a lot of still lifes (lives?).  I will post the results.  And hopefully more frequently than every four months.

Comments

Popular Posts