Category Archives: studio

Unintended portrait subject

Sorry. I usually try to avoid posting cat photos (the interwebs seem full enough of them already) but this one has a story behind it. My wife/business partner needed a new headshot and, as I was setting up the lighting, our cat Piña decided to make herself available as a stand-in while I got everything situated. She was a real pro. She hopped right into the chair and waited patiently as I made test shots, adjusted lights, etc. until everything was set for the real shoot.

I liked this shot in particular because it feels so formal. I added a bit of an oil-painting filter just to push it a bit further into the realm of those thoroughbred horse portraits. I think it would be perfect in a gilded frame, hanging above a cherry wood humidor full of Cuban cigars.

Studio work

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I’ve had fewer hours on the road lately but I’ve still been shooting fairly heavily. Instead of travel images, I’ve been working in the studio on some tabletop product shots. I could never be one of those catalog guys that does this stuff day in, day out, but I enjoy it as a break from field work. It stretches a different part of the brain.

When shooting travel, I work in a more documentary way. I shoot 99% available light and tend to work with what’s there. I don’t do a lot of posing or manipulating of objects in a shot, I look for the best angles given what I encounter. In short, I move myself and the camera rather than the subject for the most part. Given that my subjects are often architecture or landscapes, it’s really necessity that I be the moving element.

In the studio it’s different. I’m not working with available light, but typically a set of hot lights on stands. I can move them and alter their qualities with diffusers and gels in ways that I can’t affect the light in the field. There are a lot more decisions to be made in the studio due to these extra elements that are within my control. I choose backgrounds, positioning of elements, light, color, etc. Many of the shoots I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks have involved glass and mirrored products so lighting and reflected light have been a real challenge. I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with these products and how different lighting can enhance them and show off their unique qualities.

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I find the studio work experience useful in my travel work as well. Having control over lighting helps you to understand the qualities of light so that when you’re in the field, you better understand how to make use of the light you’re given. The light that you can’t control. The sun does move, it just doesn’t always go where you want it or as fast (or slow) as you wish. Clouds and haze can act as diffusers. The difference between the studio and the field photography is really how you choose to control the situation. In the studio, you can control it by acting: moving a light, adding another, etc. In the field, with the kind of travel photography I tend to do, it’s more about reacting: change your position due to sun position, wait for a cloud to pass (or move in front of the sun), warm a cloudy scene by adjusting white balance in-camera rather than gelling the light source, etc.

I’ll be back in the field soon enough. I have some local projects that I want to work on for myself and my stock files and travel is always on the horizon. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying the air conditioning and the lack of need for bug spray.

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Copying a Daguerreotype

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I had thought about a catchy title for this post like “shooting dead relatives” but decided that it might get me some strange Google hits.

Winter grinds on in these parts and I haven’t had any travel for the last few months. Instead I’ve been getting caught up on indoor work that includes updating my files with stock agencies, organizing the chaos that developed over the course of the last year in my office and doing lots of tabletop studio shoots. I don’t do a lot of studio work but I do have a few clients that need the occasional product shot. This past couple of weeks I’ve been shooting a lot of architectural glass and mirror samples. While I had the small studio area set up for this, I decided to copy some old family photos.

Some of these photos appear to be daguerrotypes. These images are tricky to photograph because they have a mirror-like surface and at most viewing angles they actually appear as a negative — almost like an etched piece of silver.

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To see the image properly, you have to look straight-on so that something dark is reflected on the surface. Reflections of any other kind would be a big problem when re-photographing these portraits so I built a box out of foam core. The bottom was a piece of black foam core so that it doesn’t reflect onto the lower portion of the daguerrotype. The sides and back were white to bounce as much light around as possible and I draped a piece of thin foam packing material over the top to soften and distribute the light that came into the box. That light came from two hot lights that I had shooting up at the ceiling and bouncing down into the box.

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To eliminate reflection from the surface of the image, I draped a piece of matte black cloth from a background stand across the front of the box. Think of the box as a puppet theater and the black cloth is the front curtain. I could stick the lens of my camera through the curtain and let the cloth drape over the lens to block any reflection from the markings on the camera itself. I used my Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 60mm macro lens to be able to get the close focus that I needed.

The system worked pretty well but there is some pitting in the surface of the glass covering the portraits that was accentuated in the copies. For the tighter shots that I made, where the frames are cropped out, I’ll need to do some significant spotting in Photoshop. I like the wider shots warts-and-all, though. The wear on the cases and the pitting of the glass show the age of these images which were likely made between 1840 and 1860.

Kentucky elk herd

Kentucky elk herd

I’m finding that I actually have more time to post when I’m on the road these days. Now that I’m back from Kentucky, I’m divided between work, painting the new house and office, packing, and preparing the old house for sale. It will all be worth it in the end, though. I look forward to having home and office under one roof again.

So, as I prepare to spend the day painting ceilings at the new place, I’ll leave you with one more shot from the elk herd that has been reintroduced on reclaimed mining land in Kentucky. This was a little later in the morning than the last shot I posted and the light was warming up a little (aided a bit here by Photoshop). Still, the fog just wouldn’t burn off. While others complained about the “bad light” I was having a blast finding ways to make the muted colors and subdued contrast work to my favor. Hopefully I succeeded a little but I know I came away with more shots than the folks who thought it was too bad to even take their lens caps off.

Two from the road

Waffle HouseMickey D's

Here are a couple of grab shots I found after finishing up with my morning shoots in Louisville, Kentucky. The Waffle House was somewhere inbetween Louisville and Lexington, across the street from where I was stocking up on peanut butter M&Ms. I tried to give it a little bit of a faded Ektachrome look in Photoshop. The McDonalds arches are peeking over the roof of the building next door to my hotel tonight — like it’s about to move in on the Waffle House’s territory.

10 hours to Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

After a long day of driving — made shorter by listening to a marathon of Car Talk podcasts — I have arrived in Louisville, Kentucky. Lots of interesting stuff to shoot this week. I’ll do my best to find time to post…

Louisville hotel