A very cool internet video of behind the scenes shooting and editing of a still life product shot – some great techniques used if you watch carefully

Heres a quick behind the scenes setup diagram for Dan’s portrait against Barrow Town Hall, hope its of help to any fellow photographers, note I’m using two flash heads as key light – both in same position, this is so I can use them at 1/8 power and hence have quick recycle times ( I shoot pretty quick !!), same shot could be done with one light in this position at 1/4 power, camera settings are for ambient exposure on the building.

Just a quick post for the few people that have requested a bit of information on the trigger that I use for the Strawberry & Cream pellet shot.

My current setup is based (loosly) on the circuit diagram and component list created by HiViz – so rather than me redesigning the wheel I’ve just provided a link to their site and schematic – take a look around the site as there is lots of very usefull information and kits available from them.

Schematic - http://www.hiviz.com/kits/instructions/documents/mte_schematics.pdf

Web Site – http://www.hiviz.com/kits/kits.htm

Behind the scenes pic of the setup from the last strawberry and cream shot – must try and contain the mess more next time I do this (bits of strawberry found next morning around 10 ft away on Kitchen Ceiling —- ooops)

Playing around trying to do a simple still life – used around three strobes in various positions with snoots etc to give several variations then merged in photoshop to give the final image, posted the originals below and may provide a tutorial on this at a later date

Internet clip from ProPhoto’s site – look closely for some lighting techniques !

VIEW: behind the scenes from Shawn Smith on Vimeo.

Lighting diagram collection that I found on the internet  (30 + pages) – nice resource for a beginner – Note this is an 8Mb pdf file and must be downloaded to view

CLICK THE IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

Simple setup and editing for a product style shot, soft lighting and white background. This was shot with minimal equipment to prove that a large studio and expensive equipment are not needed.

Final picture was taken with an exposure of around 6 sec @ F16, white balance was set using dropper in camera raw (ACR) on grey area of the background before opening the image in photoshop (CS4)

Untitled from andrew rose on Vimeo.

Lighting from todays shoot.

Yesterdays post was a soft, ‘do anything’ light, today I’ll show you probably the simplest setup I use.

First post – so I thought I’d show my standard setup for test shoots, basically a do anything setup, that although doesn’t produce anything unusual or creative, gives a good all-round light to asses a model.