I'll Survive Winter

After finishing my last post, I couldn't sleep, so I decided to take a crack at my mini-studio, even though I don't have a lot of the bits and pieces (like lighting) I think I'll need to create decent photographs.

Forty or so shots later I figured out how to get through the night. ;)

Yee-haw.

I think it's important for me to record how I create my studio shots so I can understand what I did and learn from it.

This shot was taken using my 35mm at 1.8. The Tequila bottle was resting on a full-length mirror laying face up on my dining room table. I shot down the length of the table at bottle height. I collected the leaves a couple weeks ago, and flattened some in a book because I figured I'd need a combo of flat and stand-up texture. The back drop is the matte (?) side of a piece of white bristol board taped to a box with a book in it to help it stand upright.

Lighting is a desk lamp with a reddish-pink shade resting on the rolling I beam of my rowing machine standing vertically (hey, at least it's getting used), at about 6 feet high from the ground, 2-3 feet above the bottle. It was directly behind the camera to eliminate shadows. I placed one SB-200 five inches or so behind the bottle with a orange filter, and aimed it down at the mirror so it was bouncing up at the bottle. I tried to angle and position it so the light would shine through the tequila.

I took 44 captures with a lot of experimentation with leaf positioning and aperture/depth of field. I settled for f/1.8 because it knocked some of the leaves and shadows in the back out of focus, but I did so knowing the lens (and subject) would not be as sharp as if I'd shot at f/4.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.