Photographing Still Life Tutorial March 19, 2010
Posted by Emily in : Photography, School , trackbackI’ve never been drawn to photographing “things.” So far, it’s just not my thing.
But . . . that doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn how . . .
So here goes my tutorial on photographing still life with two flood lights: a key light and a back light.
This was my first attempt at shooting this lovely toffee. (It was really hard not to eat it, by the way.) Notice how white the background is in this image . . . you might be surprised at what it looks like when the lights are pointing different directions.
This was the set up shot for this image above:
Notice how I’m using two lights for this subject. I am using two 500 watt tungsten bulbs with beauty dishes (the round dishes around my bulbs) to channel and reflect my light in a controlled direction. I placed my key light (the main light in front) high above my subject to avoid nasty harsh shadows and blown out highlights. There is not an absolute rule as to where to place the lights because every subject is different. You have to manually move your light around, paying close attention to the shadows and highlights to determine where to place it. I placed the second light in the back shining on my very high tech white sheet that I taped to the wall. (I know, so classy. Call me lazy, but I seriously did not have the energy to put together my background stand when I set this up.) Lighting the white sheet made the background very bright (white) and the overhead light lit up my subject. Remember to move your subject about five feet AWAY from your background to avoid photographing wrinkles and lint. A shallow depth of field (F3.5 to F1.4 will do the trick) will also throw the background out of focus, eliminating such distractions in your image.
This was the second lighting set-up I tried. Look at how grey the background is! I still have the white sheet up, but I turned the back light (the one that was lighting the white sheet) around and faced it directly onto my subject. No light = dark background.
This is an overhead shot with the same set-up as above. Do you notice the shadow? What a bummer, I know.
This is how the set up looked for the two images above. I turned the light around, and placed both lights at the same height to light my subject evenly. It worked nice, but seemed to be missing one thing . . . so I tried one last set up . . .
This is it! The shadow is gone! Both lights are set up at the same height, evenly lighting my subject, but I added a diffuser.
Ideally, I probably should have diffused both lights, but I was happy with the results.
What do you think? Do you want to shoot still life now? I have to admit, it’s really relaxing to shoot inanimate objects because there is no pressure to hurry up the shoot (like with kids!), and you can try as many lighting scenarios as you want without feeling like you’re wasting their time (like with adults), and you’re only dealing with ONE variable: YOU! Instead of many variables: you, kids, parents, pets, the weather, etc.
It was a lot more fun that I expected (probably because I was so relaxed) and I might start experimenting with this more. :)
I have a really fun project in the works I hope I can share with you (if my subject my obliges), so cross your fingers because it’s going to be good! :)
Comments»
I hope you have some toffee waiting for me on the 3rd!
Wow! That’s amazing what a change in lighting will do. I think the picture with the grey background is my favorite. It looks so rich and almost mysterious… well, as mysterious as a beautiful bowl of toffee (my favorite candy, by the way) can be.
Consider yourself hired for all photographs of my blog. You’ll get free meals too. It’s quite a gig!