I really haven’t photographed food before–not in any serious fashion–so when I found myself confronted with a silver platter of chocolate-covered potato chips yesterday at the Candy Factory in Columbia, Mo., I was thrown for a loop.

There was no chance I would use existing light: it was a mix of daylight and tungsten, and exposing for the chips coated in which chocolate would have meant underexposing the others significantly.  So I set up two lights bouncing into umbrellas at either end of the silver tray.  It took me a while for all that I learned about photographing metal–and look how little of it wound up in the final frame!–and its family of angles to come back to me (about 50 chimped frames) but once the reflections were under control, it just became a matter of the ratio between the key and the fill lights.

Ultimately, the SB-80-DX, on camera left, was fired at a third stop under 1/2 power, and the 550EX on camera right was fired at 1/16 power.  Could I have balanced those a bit?  Probably.  The shadows cast by the milk chocolate potato chips bother me a bit.  I’ll file that in the “next time” category.

Canon 5D II and 70-200mm f/4 L IS lens @100mm with 25mm extension tube; exposed 1/160 sec. @ f/11, ISO 200.

Tags: food, light, lighting, lit, strobe, Strobist, studio
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Patron Tequila - Bright Field Lighting - "Plan B"

Last weekend I went into the studio with a bottle of Patrón tequila and one clear idea of how to light it, only to scrap it and move on to plan b.  But then I decided that plan c–one that I had not even considered–was really going to be the best route.

My idea was to have the lime resting against the bottle on a sheet of glass with a dark background.  On another day, with different materials (like a giant sheet of black, glossy acrylic), it could be a piece of cake.  Instead, I ran into problems from the start: the dark cloth I had taped to the softbox kept falling off (Light, Science and Magic suggest making the dark background the size of the frame, and then butting that right up against the light source).

I threw out that idea and switched to bright field illumination (giving the glass black lines for definition).  It’s easier, but it doesn’t have the same oomph as something lit via dark field patterns.  I could have quit with this image, because it’s passable, but it’s also incredibly dull.  I don’t think even Crate and Barrel would want to use an image like this one in their catalogs.

My bank of ideas was dry, but a good friend of mine, Mito Habe-Evans, suggested making a “beach” for the tequila and lime out of some sand made for models and dioramas that was in the studio.  Combined with some blue gel, the result was actually pretty good. More after the jump…
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Tags: Advanced Techniques, alcohol, glass, light, lighting, lit, Patron, studio, tequila
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This past weekend I photographed Jarrad Henderson, a fellow photojournalism masters student at MU. It was a class assignment to make a portrait first with a single strobe, and then with multiple lights. That’s where the fun really began. The only problem is that I have two images that I like, so it’s hard to choose!
Ultimately, I believe this first image is the more successful of the two:

Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L Lens @ 70mm. Exposed 1/125 sec. @ f/16, ISO 100

More after the jump.
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Tags: Advanced Techniques, light, lighting, lit, portraits, strobes, studio
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In my Advanced Techniques class, I was asked to find two images where either the use of light enhanced the mood of the image, or where I couldn’t deconstruct how the studio lighting was achieved.  Note that I made copies of these two photographs on a copy stand.  I didn’t notice all of the dust on the glass cover until I was back home in front of my computer.  C’est la vie. More after the jump…

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Tags: light, lighting, lit, photographs, studio
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