Experimental Photography Friday

Keen to stay warm I thought I'd have a go at table top photography as my experiment for this Friday. I know it isnt at the cutting edge of modern photographic techniques but that matters little here. All that counts is that it's something I personally have not attempted before and will therefore be a learning process of what works, whats needed, what mistakes are made etc.

Kicking things off I would say the most important thing you need is a tripod - check

Next is lighting. Well, it was sunny earlier, but I wanted to do this with artificial light only. I dont have any proper studio lighting and didnt want to use flash so table lamps and headtorches were to be my sources of light. I soon learnt that a load of gaffer tape or some way of clamping your lights in place, possibly on your other tripods is better than holding them by hand!

I also used a link cable connected between camera and Mac to not only operate the shutter and camera settings but to give me a BIG view of what was happening in my 'scene'

I utilised a clean towel on a low stool and draped it up behind too to ensure uniformity of backdrop. This wasnt the best thing to use as the fibres of the towel have added an unwanted element to my image - no biggy though. The colour was also an error as its very similar in hue to some of those on the packaging of the tin.


Without any reflectors to bounce the light into the scene it was obvious the desk lamp was far too overpowering when pointing straight at it, even from a distance, and cast a shadow so strong that I couldnt balance it on the opposite side without a similar lamp to hand.

So i decided I would try to spotlight it instead and decided to open the can up parlty and try to light the new angle created. This was done with a small LED penlight held in place with a gorillapod about 2 inches to the left.

Then I used a headtorh handheld in front of can and just below the camera. This has caused an ugly shadow behind the can but I was careful to keep it central and in this case it has helped to isolate the ringpull. I imagine a third light held behind and above but pointing to the can would have eliminated this shadow and maybe even darkened the rear area of the towel??

The knife and fork was included as a joke element but I did carefully place the knife so as to reflect the middle dogs face. And the fork was placed on it's side to avoid a harsh reflection onto the can if left flat. (You can still see a bit of bleached out highlight from this on the middle dogs chest area)

I used f13 to ensure plenty of DOF and used live view to focus manually

As the idea with this type of photography is surely to take exactly the image you want in camera I have done very little to this in PP. Apart from increasing the blackpoint a tad all I have done is change the temperature to 6000 Kelvin.

As last week, I dont think is a great photo but I have learned from the experience and, as always have enjoyed messing about with my camera

So, was it worth the wait - or did I just make a dogs dinner of it? You decide

Have a great weekend Blippers

(Sorry about the wait Hazzer and Ill try do reignite the church quiz next week.)