day 106 - reflection management

the problem with taking a picture of a highly reflective object is that any light you put on it is just going to bounce back off. the more reflective it is, the more of a problem this is going to be. the solution is that instead of trying to light the object, you instead light the room around the object.

this flask is just brushed metal, so it's not all that difficult to deal with. however, you have to decide what it is you want to do..... do you want to play up it's reflective qualities, or show off the texture more? for this picture i decided i wanted a bit of both.

with reflective objects (like all objects) the size of your light source determines how the light is going to be bounced back into your camera. large light sources bounce light back in a very diffused manner, so you get a lot of the texture qualities in the image. small hard light sources bounce light back more intensely, so you get a lot more of the reflective qualities of the object.

for this flask's reflective qualities, i wanted smallish light sources hitting it directly. so i set up a strobe far camera right, and a strobe far camera left with a silver reflective umbrella on it. this was the result:



that defines the reflective qualities of the flask. it doesn't tell us much about the surface of the metal, though. to show the texture qualities, you need a large light source. in this case i decided on two big pieces of white posterboard used as reflectors, one on either side of the camera. the result:



notice that it's showing you what's in the room.... that black shadow area in the middle of the flask is the gap between the posterboards where my camera is sitting. if i wanted to get rid of that shadow, i would push the two posterboards together so they're touching and cut a small hole at the joint to take pictures through. there'll likely still be a shadow area, but it'll be a lot smaller and more manageable.

i decide not to do that, instead i want to change the angle.... the flask isn't very dynamic in my current setup, i want more tension, suspense, maybe mysteriousness in the shot. so i pull back some to bring in more black area around the flask, and go higher for a (to my mind) more interesting vantage point. notice that you can still see that shadow area, but now it's close to the side of the flask instead of dead center like it was. it's much more tolerable like this.

so yeah, lighting the room... this is why car photographers always have giant swaths of white translucent silk, because a shiny car will show you everything that's in that room... good bad and ugly.

setup shot:

day 105 - diy softbox

yep, cheesy, i know. a literal frame within my frame. but whatever. i think it lends an interesting graphical element to the image. i've seen wedding photographers do this sort of thing, get some ornate frame, paint it gold, then have wedding guests hold it in front of them and pose behind it. gives 'em something to do with their hands, i guess.

anyways. the idea for this post is this:


that's a lampshade from a lamp we have in our living room. i clamped it to a light stand horizontally, put a flash behind it and then draped some white fabric over the front (i used a diffusion screen from my big softbox) and something opaque over the top (reflector skin for trigrip diffuser), and bam. homemade softbox.

it worked pretty well, i think. good soft light, not too big of a light source. not very moveable.... it took two lightstands to make it work, so that was a bit awkward to adjust or move at all. but the picture results are quite nice.

it's weird how most lighting equipment can be built out of spare or random things around the house.... when you buy "professional equipment" you're really just paying for ease of use and portability.

setup shot:

day 104 - frame within a frame

today alisia and i (and tako) went for an impromptu photowalk after getting bagels for breakfast. we passed under the L, and found this cool old concrete set of arches. so i had alisia and tako run out into the middle of the street and pose in the center of an arch for a "frame within a frame" composition.

all i had was my 50mm lens, but at this distance it was pretty easy to get solid focus. all the available light was nice and soft since we were under the overpass, and of course tako is a natural in front of the camera.

bonus picure of two bearded dragons in a pet store window:

day 103 - vanity funhouse

my girlfriend has this vanity mirror thing, it's one of those that has a regular mirror on one side, and a concave mirror on the other. so i figured i might get some sweet distortions if i shoot into it. so i set it up, and played around with it. i quite like the results. the picture has a sort of a drifting focus to it.... not quite like a tilt shift lens, not quite like a purposefully out of focus shot, kinda like a funhouse mirror, but very subtle.

i had to go with manual focus on this one, since autofocus would've wanted to take pictures of the surface of the mirror, and not what the mirror's reflecting. to make my manual pre-focusing easier, i tightened up on the aperture to f9.0 at 1/160th of a second. worked out allright.

the setup shot is for a variation i did after i did the closeups.... i wanted more distortion, so i positioned the camera and mirror on one side of the room, and my lights and myself on the other. hence the extra wide double-setup shot, and the obvious differences between the picture up there and the setup shot down there.

setup shot:

results of setup shot:

day 102 - staring at the sun

this was initially an accident. i had a blue-gelled sb-28 at full power behind my head to do that rim light thing. then in one picture i accidentally let the flash go directly into the lens, saw the results and made an executive decision right then and there that i should embrace this mistake and pretend that it was my intention all along.

but i got to write something, so then i went and wrote all about it.

my first idea for this picture was to play the "what else can i do with this stuff" game. it's where i've got a bunch of things set up already, and i have to switch it all up and see what other configurations i can come up with using only that same equipment.

so this is another look using only the stuff from day 100. i like how it came out. the beauty dish on the floor is doing very little, but the sb-3 is revealing my face nicely, i thought. it's doing it's usual hardish soft light magic.

setup shot:

day 101 - rainy flowers

yeah, i just get such a kick out of my 50mm lens..... even without autofocus, it's still so much fun to play with. so it was drizzling earlier today, i went outside and took some picture of our neighbor's flowers. it's late in the season, so they're starting to show wear and tear, but that's part of what i found appealing about them..... beauty and decay. like a picture of a quickly aging supermodel. you can see what was, and what's disappearing little by little every day.

day 100 - beauty dish

yep, so i wanted to use my home made beauty dish again today, so i set up this shot. i was at first working a two light sources in front angle, beauty dish camera right, and sb-3 camera left, but decided after a few shots that the single light source on the face would be more interesting. so the sb-3 got demoted to a camera right rim/slash light, and the beauty dish went it alone.

i dig how this came out. good light on my face, good quick falloff, good rear rim/slash lights.

setup shot: