Some creative we were doing recently for a client – the colours and the shapes work so well together.
Nov 21
With the American holiday weekend fast approaching, it’s time to celebrate with a glass (or three) of champagne!
This is one of the few types of shots I do using entirely strobe lighting. To get the right lighting on the glasses and of a short enough duration to freeze the bubbles, the shot demands strobes. Whereas my typical natural light shots are 3 seconds or more in duration, this one was shot at 1/10th of a second, using an aperture of f/10.
One of the most deceptive things about this shot is the lights on the strings and the apparent size of the individual bulbs. The initial thinking is to use a longer exposure to make the bulbs larger, but in fact, it is determined by the aperture setting of the camera. Since I used a very long lens for this shot (210mm on medium format) and was relatively close to the set, I wasn’t worried about changing the aperture and the effect that would have on the depth of field in the shot – it was going to be shallow regardless.
Here is a diagram showing my lighting setup:
The key is to use a large light source – in this case, a very large white diffusion panel. That provides the nice lighting on the flutes – a small light source would not provide the beautiful strip of light down each side of the glasses.
It’s also important to keep the light off the string of lights – if you light them, you’ll light the string between the lights, and that’s not desirable. Seeing a bit of the string is fine, but lighting the string would look odd.
Finally, the backdrop is lit separately to show the colour of the red wreaths.
The rest is just placement of the props on the set to give a nice overall balance. The most demanding part – surprisingly, it was the metal wine bucket with the knobby handles. Getting it just right took some work.
The final image is a composite of two shots – the one exposed as seen above, and a second under-exposed, to deal with the bright speculars in the flutes that resulted from the lighting setup. The under-exposed shot is composited into this shot to “paint over” the specular areas of the glasses, bringing them back from white.
Hope you enjoyed the post – have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Aug 30
I got totally inspired by a stop-motion video clip a friend e-mailed me, showing how Peter Belanger shot the iPhone cover for MacWorld. I really like his approach, showing more of the setup and post-production.
So I decided to brush up on my Final Cut skills and build my own video, piecing together the shots from my earlier post, showing how we progressed through the cosmetic shot for a client.
The video shows about 2 and a half hours of work compressed into 30 seconds. Enjoy!
Aug 25
It’s fun to look back at the shots taken on a shoot, to see how we progressed from the initial quick shots, through refinement, to the final shot. In this post, I will show you how we worked our way through a cosmetic shot.
Our brief called for a bright, natural looking shot of cosmetics, with an antique feel. We needed to use robin’s egg blue in the shot, and highlight a few of the cosmetic products provided by the client.
To keep things looking natural, we used natural light, back-lit from a window. Here was the first shot – throwing a few things onto the set to see how they’d look in the given light.
Shot #1
The shot is under-exposed, but gave us an idea of how the products would look together. The big problem is the various sizes of the cosmetics and the different finishes (milky plastic, clear plastic, and tin).
We next tried opening up some of the products and looking at them from a different angle. Here’s where we went next:
Shot #2
Not overly motivating – this mix of products was going to take some time to work out. The product in the tins was of a very neutral palette – which was in contrast to the white cream in the high plastic container, and the brighter colours in the tiny plastic containers. This higher angle shot confirmed the challenge of getting the products working together from a colour stand-point.
Shot #3
The under-exposure doesn’t make it as apparent, but the contents of the various containers still weren’t going to work together. We added the powder to the mix – but it was similar to the products on the left in terms of palette neutrality. We tried accessorizing, moving the products around, adding new ones, removing existing ones, but finally realized it wasn’t going to work and we had to try something different.
So we abandoned the setup and started with a fresh perspective, and came up with this:
Shot #4
Now we’re starting off better – we used an old flaking mirror with a robin’s egg blue sheet under the mirror. Still using natural light, but we can see real promise in this direction. Luckily, the client was in agreement that we needed to abandon the dark surface used in the first shots.
Our next challenge – introduce more elements and see if we can get them looking great together. Here’s where we ended up next:
Shot #5
You can see the challenge in trying to get these products looking great together. They are different enough to be challenging, but we knew that with enough work, we could make it work. We started moving products around, taking some out of their containers, pouring them about, and accessorizing, and here’s where we ended up next:
Shot #6
We also started playing with a bit of fill light from the camera’s perspective to brighten the front sides of each of the containers. The flower petals were starting to work, and the addition of the antique mirror (a requirement for the shot) were starting to work. They’re rough, but the direction is promising.
But before we accessorize much more, we need to deal with the difference in sizes between the various containers. The milky white cream was demanding too much attention, and our attempts to hide the tin behind it wasn’t working. We needed to change our perspective, so we came up with this:
Shot #7
It’s getting there. Still not pleased with the size of the product in the centre, and we weren’t sure about the powder – it’s not clear what it is. Without the container, it could be anything. More tweaking:
Shot #8
We removed the powder, tipped the milky cream on its side, and changed the focal point, moving it forward to the small products on the left. Unfortunately, even with those two changes, the cream still demanded too much attention – it was as big on its side as sitting up-right. Solution – move the product to the edge of the shot, like this:
Shot #9
Ah, that’s it! Some tweaking, accessorizing, and we’ll have this shot complete. We added another metal element in the background, and decided to bring back the flowers and work on placement. Sometimes the first placement works, sometimes it doesn’t – we just had to try and see what worked. We ended up with something like this:
Shot #10
We were getting really close. A few more tweaks, placement of the flowers, and ultimately nailed the shot. Took about 2 1/2 hours, but worth it – would you agree?
Final Shot
Client was pleased, and we breathed a sigh of relief that we were ultimately able to make the very different products work well together. It’s fun to scroll back and see all the steps and the progressions made to come up with the final shot. There was no post-processing – what was shot in-camera was what we delivered to the client. Typical for our natural light setups.
Hope you enjoyed it! Till next post.
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