Another Take on Photographing a Bottle of Wine

As you know I recently posted something on shooting a bottle of wine in a light tent, to see it CLICK HERE.

Well, this time around I wanted to try something a little different than the last shoot and go for an entirely different look.
So I ditched the light tent and set up with a single Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2 with a 65x65cm light-box, and attached a strip of black card-stock to the front of it with two black clothing pegs effectively covering about 50% of the light-box straight down the middle. I also had two strips of black card-stock on either side of the bottle to subtract some light from the light-box behind the bottle of wine. There were also two light stands on the table with some white A4 sheets of paper clamped and placed to reflect some light back onto the bottle of wine. Maybe this is a little complicated, so let me just show you a picture:

The wine bottle is on top of two glasses which were a simple matter to edit out afterwards. The end result looks ok to me. :-)

And now, the same bottle of wine and same basic set-up as above, but this time I put the bottle onto a different surface. It really changes the whole look of the end result:

Venetian Painted Mask - a one light portrait.

Another version of a previous pic (in colour) from the same session that I posted here: Venetian Painted Mask

Nikon D90, Aperture Priority Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 105mm with VR on, hand held, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO200, Nikon sb600 fired into a bounce umbrella to camera left.

Toni (with an "i"), photographed in my "Strobist" style studio.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 105mm with VR on, hand held, f/11, 1/200s, ISO200.
A Nikon sb600 bounced in an umbrella to camera left set just slightly higher than the subject, and a Nikon sb700 bounced in an umbrella to camera right and somewhat higher than the subject (about 45 degrees), with both sb's on light stands and triggered via Nikon's excellent CLS.
Edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

A Quick Portrait.

Took a quick portrait this evening, setting up lights, shooting and packing back down all done in about 20 minutes!

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 90mm with VR on, hand held, f/11, 1/200s, ISO200, two Nikon sb's bounced into two bounce umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

Old Brass Bell shot with a Nikkor 40mm AF-S DX Micro f/2.8G

Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, Aperture Priority mode, ISO200, 1/80s, f9.0, two off-camera Speedlights into bounce umbrellas fired via Nikon's fantastic CLS system.

Another Simple Portrait

Another simple portrait with a plain white background.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 52mm with VR on, hand held, f/8, 1/80s, ISO200, bunch of various small Nikon sb's and some umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

A Simple Portrait

A simple portrait with a plain white background.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 52mm with VR on, hand held, f/8, 1/80s, ISO200, bunch of various small Nikon sb's and some umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

Droplets on Sunflower

Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, ISO800, Manual mode, f25, 1/125s, Nikon sb700 bounced into an umbrella to camera left.

How Getting Creative with White Balance can add a little Zing to your Product Photography!

Ok, so how to add a little something to a pic by fiddling with the white balance a bit? First, I took a standard pic of my daughters sneakers. What do you mean that's not something you usually do? Just go with the flow and stop arguing with me ok!

Standard pic of daughters sneakers:

This was taken with two Speedlights to light the sneakers, an sb700 to camera left on a light stand firing into a black-backed umbrella and providing the main light from the front. There is also an sb600 with a home made gobo shooting onto the white wall behind the subject (sneakers) to provide a second soft light from behind.

The result is not bad lighting wise, but what if we wanted to add another element to this to change, and hopefully improve, the look?



So what I did was attach the incandescent filter that comes with the sb700 to the front of the sb700 that was giving me my main light. It was on a light stand shooting into a black backed umbrella from camera left a little up. (See the set-up/pull-back shot further down.) The pic below is of the sb700 with incandescent filter attached and firing, while the sb600 is providing the light against the back wall. The cameras white balance is set to incandescent, so the sb700's light is correctly balanced and the sb600's light turns a lovely blue!

And here is the sb600, complete with home made cut-from-cornflakes-box-covered-in-silver-duct-tape gobo. It is held on the flash with a spare modelling balloon "borrowed" from my wife who uses these things to make balloon animals at childrens parties. Yeah, I know, but it works! ;^)

This combination now gives me a result that I like a little better! See for yourself:

And here is the promised set-up/pull-back shot:

The orange cloth is a cheap microfibre cloth which is great for cleaning surfaces, products, camera lenses, and my glasses. Never leave home without one. The table is a cheap fold down variety that is quite sturdy, but light weight. You can get them cheap at Netto in Scandinavia. That might be a bit far to travel for a cheap table if you live in the US or Africa (or elsewhere) so rather look out for one locally. But if you do decide to get one at Netto, look me up when you get to Malmö, I'll buy coffee!

One last piece of equipment that I used in this shot was the Nikon SG-3IR, which is a special cheap plastic flippy flappy thing that attaches to the cameras flash hotshoe and covers the built-in flash to filter out any light from the flash while still letting the infrared light through to maintain communications with the remote flashes without influencing the light on the subject (sneakers). It looks like so:

The photo of the sneakers was taken with a Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, Aperture Priority mode, ISO200, 1/60s, f11.0, implementing Nikon's fantastic CLS system, hand held and processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.

Have a great day!

Children are Tough to Photograph!

As many of you know, I spent most of December shooting kids in a mall, and I have to say, it was tough! I have a new admiration for photographers who specialize in working with children!

But it is very rewarding to photograph children as well, to see the reaction of the parents when they see the prints for the first time and you know they just love it! The reaction of the children can be priceless. For me the interesting thing was to see how each individual child's character really comes to the fore, especially in the themed setups we did.

In the photo below are three very different siblings doing very different things in reaction to being in the same shot. Rather than trying to keep maximum control over what the children were doing while posing, I just let them have free rein and got some great memories for their parents.

Some parents ended up getting several extra prints made for all the grandparents, uncles, aunts, god-parents, etc. which was very good for business!

 An explanation of the set-up used is here: My Santa Set-up

My Santa Set-up

Since the 5th of December I have been taking the typical Santa in the mall pics that we see every year! It's actually quite fun, but a lot of work as it has been crazy busy. While I have been there a lot of "pros" and amateurs alike have expressed an interest in my lighting set-up, how I do it, and why! It seems that the "strobist" concept hasn't caught on in South Africa the same way it has elsewhere in the world. So here is a short explanation and a few sample pics.

My basic setup is a couple of Nikon sb flashes, one sb700 and one sb600. I bounce both of these into umbrellas in order to diffuse the light and get a nice even lighting over the entire set. I use a shoot through umbrella and a black backed bounce umbrella, and the reason these two? Because it's what I have of course! If I used studio lights it would become much more complicated and require cables running electricity around for people to fall over, it wouldn't be as easy to unpack and pack, etc. Here is a pull back pic of the entire set-up:

There is a very large skylight directly above the area where we are located and the light coming in is constantly changing because of the sun moving, clouds, rain, etc. so in order to keep the light and colour consistant I totaly underexpose the scene by setting my camera to manual at 1/200s and f11. Without flash it looks like this:

My flashes are set to TTL and they automatically bring the exposure back up to normal. I fire them wirelessly via Nikons very cool CLS system. The final result looks like this:

Perfectly exposed, sharp, and with very consistant colour! I don't have time to download these to a computer, tweak them and then print them, so I shoot jpg and make sure that all my settings are correct in camera to achieve the fastest workflow and print them directly from my SD cards at the lab in the mall. The resultant prints are just great!

So if you want to put that nice shiny new dslr to good use and actually make some money to justify the expense then you now know how to do Santa pics for Christmas 2012! Whoohoo!

Simple Product Photography Set-Up.

Simple is always good!

And the result:

Shades

Another day another product shoot!

Nikon D90, manual mode, 200ISO, f11, 1/200s, Nikon 50mm f1.8D, Nikon sb700 and sb600 bounced in umbrellas left and right high. Set-up shot below.

Stock card seamless white background held up against the wall by duct tape. No photographer should ever be without duct tape!

This would have worked much better with a light tent... but I don't have one. Someone recently told me that photography is about problem solving, so sometimes you just gotta make a plan!
Note to self: get a light tent...

There's no BizNiz like ShowBizNiz!

Another "Portrait in a small place"

Click HERE to see the set-up shot and more info for this photograph.

Portraits in small places

So you don't have a studio, and the wife won't let you convert the spare room either, and the garage is full of junk, so what to do to be able to use that shiny dslr and the speedlights you got for Christmas last year and you've been itching to put to good use? Well you make some compromises and improvise. I have been living in a small apartment for the past year and don't have much space, but I can still setup my lights for a two light pic like the one below:

Here is how I set it up:

By using the curtains as a backdrop and squeezing the lights in between couches and side tables I managed to get a fairly good two light portrait set-up. Behind the model is my Strobist DIY Beauty Dish on a tripod. To the right and high is a shoot through umbrella on my junky tripod converted to super cool light stand. Nikon sb600 in the beauty dish and sb700 in the umbrella, both triggered via Nikons very cool CLS system. Easy peasy!

Venetian Painted Mask

Face painting is not just for children!

Bowl of Rice

And below the set-up shot for "Bowl of Rice".

Normally I would try to get rid of the light spill from the flash shooting into the umbrella, but in this case it actually helped with the light I was trying to achieve by reflecting some light from slightly behind the subject.

Nikon D90, Nikkor 50mm f1.8D, f4.5, 1/200s, Nikon sb700 flash shot through a white umbrella with the wide angle flash diffuser out, hand held.

Two Speedlight Portrait

So I have been trying to lure another victim into my photographic snare solicit another eager and willing volunteer to try out a slightly edgy looking two speedlight portrait when I spotted my son Ben in an ACDC t-shirt looking very much like an 18 year old and I conned asked him to pose for me. Of course he was a little reluctant very eager to please as always and jumped to the opportunity to be featured on my blog!

Nikon D90, manual mode, 18-105 kit lens, zoomed to 105mm, f22, 1/200s, ISO200, Nikon sb600 to camera left and behind Ben shot bare and sb700 camera right with shoot through umbrella with both fired wirelessly via Nikon's nifty CLS system. Edited in Corel Paint Shop Pro X3 (which is going for a bargain price right now btw!).

Toyota LandCruiser FJ62 4X4 Station Wagon

I am selling my trusty Toyota LandCruiser FJ62 4X4 Station Wagon.

Well looked after. Motor professionally redone last year by Toyota SA. Comes with bull bar, roof carrier, high lift jack, 4x metal Jerry Cans, full alarm/immobilizer/anti-hijack system, Dobinsons shocks and springs all around, recovery strap, window tinting and cd/radio. The "real deal" for overland travel through Africa!

If you are in the market for a good used 4X4 (and you live somewhere in Southern Africa!), then send me an email at thephotophile@gmail.com

And just in case you are interested, here is the obligatory set-up shot, it is a photography blog after all!

Nikon D90, 18-105 kit lens, taken in the middle of the day but in shade, zoomed to 52mm, manual mode, f8.0, 1/200s, ISO200, Nikon sb600 camera right and sb700 camera left fired wirelessly via Nikon's uber cool CLS system. I underexposed the shot a slight bit and let the flashes sort out their own exposure themselves via iTTL, this had the effect of a darker background which made the vehicle stand out. Isn't technology wonderful!?