Lighting setup and notes from Kyle.

1. Limelight

To shake things up a little bit, we lit this shot from above using one hotlight and a diffusion panel. This provided fairly open shadows and let the upper part of the background go darker to serve as the backdrop for dave's hand and the flame.



2. Butterfly

We used a two light, high key setup for the butterfly shot. One light was placed at a 45 degree angle behind a diffusion panel. The second light was back and on the right to provide an artificial sunlit look. We attached one of the "butterflies" to a dowel rod to make it "fly."





3. Gumshoe

Again, just one light was needed since our set was so small (baby shoe at the thrift store).
We lit from the left side this time in order to throw the shadow underneath the shoe




4. We did a simple one light setup for this shot. We wanted some severe, dramatic shadows for this one, so we didn't use a fill card or second light. We did place a diffusion panel in front of the 650 arri for just a little bit of softening, but had it right in front of the hotlight so the shadows were still crisp.

Images from the shoot

Not sure what to say here.
Here are the images, pretty self explanatory. I don't want to spoil the game for crit so I'll leave them untitled.

Final Studio idea

So I'm going to be working with Kyle on our final project. Seeing as he has a bum arm and I have a bum brain when it comes to coming up with an idea for this project the Jones Petersen duo should be rocking. Kyles idea has to do with compond words and creating them visually. An example would be the word butterfly, rather than taking a photo of a butterfly what we'll be doing is taking a photo of butter flying. . . get it? Give it a sec. . . . there you go. If you're still having a hard time here is a image I saw on the google that's doing the same thing we are.

Just plain ol fun

This shows how mature we grad students are.

Choptober shoot

At the end of the shoot, we took images for the Choptober poster. This was our most interesting lighting setup, which you can see in the shot above. We had a strobe fitted with a snoot high and to the left of the subject, with the light raking across the side of the subject's face. I held a fill card in front of the subject to bounce some light back into the subject's face. A third light with a grid is behind the subject pointed towards the camera to provide a rim of light distinguishing the subject's profile. More of these shots will be posted later.

Broad Lighting

For this set of images we used broad lighting where we shot from the lit side of the subject. The key light with a softbox is placed to the side and a little in front of the subject for a more "rounded" feel. Jason's image is actually closer to split lighting, where the light is directly to the side of the subject. Once again we used a strobe with a grid spot to light the background and exposed with an aperture of f11 at 1/60. If you look closely at the second image of Dave, you can see a single tear running down his cheek, no special effects needed.

Short Light. To short?

For these shots we used a "short light" in which the shadow side of the subject is facing the camera and the key light is placed to the side and a little behind the subject. We used the dry erase board as a reflector so we could get some detail in the shadows. The setup shot is above. This provides a more dramatic feel and a slimming effect. Once again we exposed with an aperture of F11 at 1/60.

Studio Portraits! Glamour/butterfly light

Here are a few of the shots we took using a glamour lighting setup. This style is generally very pleasing, very soft and free of harsh shadows. The only strong shadow is beneath the chin to provide some contour on the face. We had a small softbox above the camera as a key light. We also had a light behind the subject with a grid spot to light the background. A hair light with a grid spot is also used on Jason's shot. We exposed with an aperture of F11 at 1/60.

shots from shoot 4

To see more shots click here

Video from shoot 4

most complicated metering ever.
All in all the shoot went good.

Video from Shoot 3

Words of wisdom and guidance from the glass master Rich Meade.

Chrome from Shoot 2

This was the chrome from shoot #2. I would have put it up earlier but I had to turn it in last week. The initial meter reading was 1/25 sec f/11.5. With the addition of a stop and a half exposure we arrived at 2sec at f/11.5.
Can you dig it?

Chromes From Studio shoot 3

The first image is the same as the second with plus 1.5 stops of exposure. The reason for this was to make the image "higher key" or brighter.

The second image is of our normal exposure with belows extension factored in, the settings were 1sec at f/11.5. Before the belows extension our meter reading was 1/25 sec at f/11. We added two stops due to the large distance light would need to travel from lens to film.

Shots from Studio shoot 3

Here are some shots of all of us working on our third shoot.

CLICK HERE

Roids Studio Shoot 3

So glass master Richard hit the ball out of the park with our latest shoot. Rich framed and composed where I did the grunt work. Above are the Polaroids from our shoot. There are minor adjustments between the three, mainly dealing with negative space issues and controlling the reflections from the rear bottles. All in all the shoot went good. Rich dropped of the film and we'll see how they come out tomorrow.

Beer Glass Study

To better understand how comercial photographers shoot glass I did some reseach online. Like I mentioned in a previous post looking at the beverage photos at restraunts is my favorite way to pass the time while waiting for my food. Finding the images were a lot easier than finding hammer shots. Richard is experienced in shooting beer bottles so I can't wait to learn from his previous experiences.

To see images I found online check out this link.

Video from Shoot 2

Working shots from Shoot 2

To see the rest of the images CLICK HERE

Polaroid From Studio Shoot 2

Above is our Polaroid for our second shoot. The light was from above through a diffusion scrim at a 45 degree agle. We also added a key light from the images right to help create some of the highlights.
f/16.3 1/2 sec.

Researching Hardware Photography.

So part of our assignment for class is to research studio shots that can help us creatively with our own shoots. This sounds lame but I really do believe that looking at other commercial shots can help when it comes time to doing it yourself. I'm always the dork at Applebees looking at their photos in the desert/drink menu. Thats right I look at the menu for the pictures. So in class when we were all told about the tear sheet assignment I said to myself "cool I like doing that anyway". That is until I started looking for images of hardware (tools) for our upcoming shoot on Monday. My god finding photos of hammers, which is what my group is doing, has to be the most painful research I've ever done for a photo shoot. You'd think that there are tons of images of hammers all nicely lit, selective focus, perfect reflections but NO, None. This isn't to say they don't exist but my God where are they?! Is there some super hardware magazine that only exists in some underground tool world? Sorry for the rant but the only images I could find were plain shots with a white background or an old picture of MC Hammer, or some band named hammer or images of a new video game called hammer or. . . . you get the idea. Even Home Depot and Lowes have ebay style images. I guess it just comes down to the fact that people shopping for tools don't need any pretty glossy imagery to sell a tool, especially a hammer. Below are some of the great images out there of hammers, my favorite one is of a hammer thats been in outer space! Woooooooo.

Review of sketches for project #2

During class it was brought to my attention that half of my sketches were of kitchen ware which apparently is different from hard ware. So after having my ideas cut in half and the realization that we can't really be swinging an axe in the studio we decided to go with the hammer and rock idea.
So after the idea was pinned down we as a group made sure we were all on the same page. Each of us is going to bring in a hammer so we can see whose got the best. I'm going to collect more rocks from my apartment complex, Richard's going to find a piece of wood that can be used to fill the negative space between the rocks. The reason for the wood is more precautionary that it is actually needed for the shoot. We figured it would be better to have some wood fill the negative space apposed to the table top used in the studio. Film and Polaroids have been acquired, roles designated and props are being acquired. All is on track for a quick and successful photoshoot.

Final images from first shoot.

The first image is file number 93. It was shot with the main light placed behind the subject with no scrim or bounce. 1/10sec at f/11, half stop over meter reading.

Second image is file number 72. The light is coming from the left of the subject through a diffusion scrim with out bounce. 1/10sec at f/4.5, half stop over meter reading.

Ideas for project 2

Here are some shots of the shoot via Pepe.