Photography
Related: About this forumRemember the table top 'studio' I made?
Well, it's been raining for two days and cabin fever is setting in, so I broke it out.
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One of the assignments I had in college was 'a black cat on a coal pile at midnight'. Otherwise known in portraiture as low key. Well, I don't have a black cat but I do have a lump of coal.
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Ya' gotta love black velvet. You can almost hear it suck up all the light when the flash goes off . . .
blm
(113,064 posts)flamin lib
(14,559 posts)Nay
(12,051 posts)of my grandson's dog for him. I'd do the grandson, too, but we're distancing.
flamin lib
(14,559 posts)flamin lib
(14,559 posts)edbermac
(15,940 posts)I have lighting diagram books and am curious how you rigged this.
flamin lib
(14,559 posts)My subjects are mounted on stands or taped to stiff wire like a coat hanger. I use double stick tape and florists clay to stick them to the stands and sometimes just stab them like I did with the vegetables.
For lighting I park it next to a window to get soft unidirectional light. I can make the light more directional by putting a cover over the box closing off any extraneous light from above. Then I place reflectors as needed to get highlights and separation on the shadow side.
I have reflectors of various sizes and brightness as you can see in this pic:
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Supports are coat-hangers and I use hook n loop to attach the reflectors or gobos as needed.
Oh, and if you want the light coming from the other side of your subject, just mount it upside down.
3Hotdogs
(12,390 posts)csziggy
(34,136 posts)I was just thinking about your setup the other day. Right now, nearly everything I own is in storage as we are putting on an addition. In a month or so, we will be unpacking everything. I want to take pictures of each piece and write a short description and history of the ones that have history (a lot came from my family, some through many generations).
So I was thinking about your mini-studio. I even went looking online for velvet. Good thing I saw your post today - I had almost decided on some crush velvet but the texture of the velvet would compete with the object in the foreground. Good thing I didn't order the crushed velvet.
Do you solely use black for the backgrounds? Some of the object I have are very dark so I was thinking of both black and an off white velvet for the backdrop. I did see your egg picture, so I suspect the answer is yes.
flamin lib
(14,559 posts)velvet. Like I said, if you listen real hard you can hear it suck up the light.
I decorated my kitchen with peppers of various kinds. I fell in love with the gray walls and the red from the peppers was a natural.
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That said, I tend to extremes. High key or low key. I do use other backgrounds--sheets, towels and shower curtains or whatever strikes me but the extremes call to me.
When I mat and frame I keep it equally simple; white mat with thin black sub-mat in a black frame. That's just me, YMMV.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)If I eat them, the blisters continue through my digestive system. So I avoid them.
I do have some nice old white sheets with a very washed, soft texture. Maybe I will try them, but I will have space to store a couple of different options for background drapes.
Ages ago I was selling stuff on eBay and found that a good picture got higher bids. When I sold a model of the Millenium Falcon, I used a charcoal cloth with some metallic threads as the backdrop and it probably increased the sale price by 20%. I would have used black, but didn't have any budget for anything. I'd set up a folding chair, drape it with some cloth or sheets or twoels, and use a halogen light that was too hot for my needlework. No reflectors, just direct light. It went up quick, used things I had on hand, and was effective - and free.