Experimenting with gels for still life.
This week will be a pure photography blog post, but it may be interesting to non-photographers as well. There's a genre of photography that most people never speak about, but everybody sees it hundreds of times each day. You see it driving your car, walking down the street, on almost every website. Have you guessed it yet? It's still life photography. I think most people don't talk about still life photography because to most people, me included initially, it sounds easy and boring. Oh man, have I ever been more wrong.
It could take several hours to photograph one object. I couldn't understand why it would take an enormous commitment of time to photograph a watch. I had the opportunity to have my eyes opened when I spoke to a professional still life photographer. He explained how each photo is composites of several photos, each one used for a specific reflection of light. For example, for watches there is a special pink light just for a certain gear in the watch. You also have to make sure you have photos of each tiny gear visible from the watch, a photo for the reflection of the glass on the watch, a photo for the rim, a photo of the band, and a photo of the stem. Oh don't forget you also have to edit all of them to look like a single image and figure out new creative ways to set the scene.
Trying a new way to display a gas mask.
With all of that, what persuades any sane person to pursue the world of still life? Yes, it's an extraordinary amount of work, but it's actually a interesting technical challenge. It forces you to truly focus on your light and makes you critically think about how to solve the problem. To make it even more challenging you can try to not composite the photo and do it in one shot. I did that with a wine bottle and it certainly took some creative solutions. For example, for the label we cut out a piece of white board the size of the label and used metal wire to create a makeshift stand. I had to cut it out the specific size so it wouldn't be shown in the reflection of the bottle and the wire was thin enough to not see it either. Then, I was getting some white reflection on the outline of the bottle and solved it by lining the entire scene, except the frame, with black cloth. Finally, getting the thin line of light on the bottle was the easiest part by playing with the height and angle of a strip box.
Let me know of your experiences with still life and see you next week!