Dec 20

Ring with water vortex

By derek Still Life No Comments »

In this shot, I wanted to combine the ring used in the pigment shot with a vortex of water spinning down through the ring. The first trick was to determine how to create the vortex.

We started by placing a large 4L beaker on a magnetic mixer, and played with different sized stir sticks to get the right effect with the vortex – we needed to use the larger sticks given the volume of water.

But the biggest problem was trying to light a circular beaker that is made of normal glass i.e., not sand-blasted glass like our custom tanks. On a whim, I thought we could try the magnetic mixer under the tank we used to create the splashing pearls, thinking it might be powerful enough to move that volume of water.

And it worked!

We were able to get the vortex dancing about in the tank, creating all kinds of shapes for us. So we started working on lighting, and came up with the following setup:

Vortex in tank

Vortex in tank

The magnetic mixer was placed under the tank in the middle, supporting the weight of the tank. We placed a silver card on the mixer so the top of the plate wouldn’t reflect up into the vortex formed above it.

To provide the background, we aimed a broncolor pulso-spot 4 at a scrim with some tough-spun attached to it hanging just behind the back of the tank. The pulso-spot 4 created a round light on the scrim, which was diffused even more by the tough-spun, resulting in a nice soft round light with gentle fall-off, without eminating light into the tank itself.

We took a number of shots of the vortex while it formed in the tank until we had a number of great shots to use in the final composite. The tank was then removed, and the ring was shot in the existing lighting setup to use in the final composite. Using the ring shot from the pigment setup would not have worked – a different focal length lens was used in this setup (120mm) and slightly different lighting setup. The differences would have been enough to make the ring look as though it didn’t belong.

Here’s the final shot after compositing:

Ring vortex

Ring vortex

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Dec 09

Ring with pigment powder

By derek Still Life 1 Comment »

Photographing small objects like rings provide their own challenges – you want the ring to have life and textured lighting, but the surface to light is very small, so careful attention to placement of the white plexi sheets is critical.

Here’s the top view of the layout

ring 254x300 Ring with pigment powder

I find that if I sit between the camera and the subject, in this case the ring, and have my head at roughly the same perspective as the camera, I get a clear idea of what’s going to be seen in terms of lighting on the ring. Power on the modeling light on one of the two lights and play with the angle and distance of the white plexi until you get just the right lighting on the ring. Power down the modeling light, and power on the modeling light on the other light, and do the same. By isolating each light source, you can concentrate on one light at a time.

picture 1 300x286 Ring with pigment powder

The broncolor PulsoSpot-4 is used to illuminate the backdrop with a grid pattern provided by a gobo on the light. The backdrop is a fair distance behind the set so it doesn’t get hit by ambient light.

Separate shots are taken of just the ring, just the backdrop, and just the powder interacting with the ring. These are then composited together in post to create the final image.

In the final version, we decided that the background with the pattern didn’t suit the image, so we dropped it and went with a black velvet cloth to get a dark back-drop.

The following shows the final composite:

Ring with pigment powder

Ring with pigment powder

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