The wonders of indirect light
Dec/03/09 10:47 Filed in: Photo
shoots
The art of photographing kitchen utensils.
If you are a photographer like me and you don't own a closet full of lighting equipment (and does not want even wan to own a closet full of lighting equipment), utilizing indirect light coming through any window in your house is absolutely fantastic for photographing... well,things. Have you ever seen those dreamy type flower portraits? The rose for example with the water drops on it, with the blossom being kind of underexposed and only partially visible? This mystic looking pile of coffee beans? If this is something you like, than indirect light is something for you.
Since
I decided to utilize the indirect light coming
through the back kitchen window, photographing
kitchen utensils seemed to be a good choice to
start with....
In the image here
you can see the professional studio setup. The sun
is shining through the window and partially onto
the black, slightly reflective countertop (what a
b*tch that is to clean, I am telling you). I
positioned the camera straight in fromt of the
window, aiming at the countertop, using it as an
almost black backdrop. This gave me the indirect
light and also some direct sunrays. To avoid glare
on the countertop but still use those rays I had to
simply play a bit with viewing angle. The subjects
to be photographed were some stainless steel
spoons, forks and knives. And a whisk. So this
makes for the basic setting: silver colored,
stainless steel kitchen utensils on a black,
somewhat reflecive surface area as backdrop. Not
too shabby, I would think.
In case you don't have that shiny black surface, or want to photograph something standing up, you can play games here. You could use any old uni-colored cloth as a backdrop. Brown for sephia based iamges for example. Or grey, or red, for the more aggressive (or contrastful black and white) approach. And no, there is no need to spend a huge amount of money at B&H for professional backdrops - cheap cloth from Wal-Mart will do just fine.
Depending on how you want to capture the light on the subject, you'd have to pick the right time of day and your approach angle. I chose the early morning hours because that gave me a nice mixture of indirect light and those few sunrays I was talking about. But that of course depends on your window. Essentially I just placed the utensils on the countertop and started experimenting. I achieved some quite interesting shots (or so I find) by simply playing with the viewing angle and showing, how the sun fell onto the stainless steel utensils.
The key was to
spot meter with the built in meter of my Nikon D60
for the highlights of the stainless steel and
expose them so there were no overexposed, burned
out areas. After that it was a matter of moving the
utensil around and waiting for the right amount of
sun, so the overall appearance of the image met my
image I had in mind. But I realized quickly that I
really would need my tripod. When you take a close
look at the displayed photographs, you will see
that I have indeed a depth of field (DOF) problem:
for these iamges I wuold have really liked the
entire utensil to be in focus. But at f/13 that was
just not possible. At this setting I was also
already down at 1/60 exposure time. Which is quite
challenging for a handheld shot. Unfortunately, my
tripod is, as of today, still in some container
with the rest of my things on a boat on the
Atlantic Ocean. So I had to accept the limited
depth of field. I could call it for today "soft
focused photographs". Yea, that will do.
The images displayed here were taken in raw and developed using Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 with the suggested settings. No corrections on exposure or black values were made. This is due to the lousy monitor I have to use now, which is my 8 year old 15" not calibrated LCD. That was the only thing that fit in my suitcase, so I could have at least a temporary setup until my stuff arrives.
Go ahead and start experimenting behind those windows during the cold winter months. Let your fantasy cary you away. You will be surprised what amzing photographs you can create.
In case you don't have that shiny black surface, or want to photograph something standing up, you can play games here. You could use any old uni-colored cloth as a backdrop. Brown for sephia based iamges for example. Or grey, or red, for the more aggressive (or contrastful black and white) approach. And no, there is no need to spend a huge amount of money at B&H for professional backdrops - cheap cloth from Wal-Mart will do just fine.
Depending on how you want to capture the light on the subject, you'd have to pick the right time of day and your approach angle. I chose the early morning hours because that gave me a nice mixture of indirect light and those few sunrays I was talking about. But that of course depends on your window. Essentially I just placed the utensils on the countertop and started experimenting. I achieved some quite interesting shots (or so I find) by simply playing with the viewing angle and showing, how the sun fell onto the stainless steel utensils.
The images displayed here were taken in raw and developed using Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 with the suggested settings. No corrections on exposure or black values were made. This is due to the lousy monitor I have to use now, which is my 8 year old 15" not calibrated LCD. That was the only thing that fit in my suitcase, so I could have at least a temporary setup until my stuff arrives.
Go ahead and start experimenting behind those windows during the cold winter months. Let your fantasy cary you away. You will be surprised what amzing photographs you can create.
