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"Photography"
C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me!
Samples from a tasty shoot for my cousin’s cookie business: Something Baked. The photos will be used on her website, and were featured in a recent review on a local food blog: Phoenix Bites – Get Baked.
Notes from the shoot:
- I still haven’t perfected the white balance settings when using the light tent. I used a gray card this time to help, but still found myself adjusting lighting and tone in photoshop afterwards. It was an improvement, and required less editing time than my first attempt, but still stands to be streamlined.
- Arranging the collage also took some trial and error and getting the borders even remains tedious. I think if I used the stroke effect on the layers more effectively I’d save myself a lot of time and the borders would be more aligned and proportionate.
- Otherwise, I’m generally pleased with this final product. And as good as they look, they tasted even better!
Alternative titles:
- Inception 2: Sweet Dreams
- Toki-Doki‘s last treat
- Goodbye sweet world
- Death’s favorite cookie
- Fatal attraction
Photo details:
- Exposure: 0.6
- Aperture: f/25.0
- Lens: 100 mm f/2.8 macro
- External flash
- Light tent with two external lamps
“Hi, I’m a Con.”
I chose one my favorite shoes to expose as the first subject in my new light box. A light box (or light tent) eliminates the unwanted shadows that you often get when shooting objects like this, and comes in handy for displaying products for promotions. Light Boxes can be made at home for cheap, but ever the wannabe handyman, I had a gift certificate to Tempe Camera and went the really easy route instead: an SV Imagemaker Plus Light Tent that included some backdrops and two external lamps.
The main issue I’ve identified after my first session with this equipment is that it’s very easy to overexpose the photograph. Adjusting the white balance manually makes a big difference and is something I’ll do every time from now on. Also, it is possible to get good lighting without external lamps, but I was very pleased with the way they worked together when placed on opposite sides of the subject. Finally, the most important pick-up I’ll need to make before my next session is some write-on / write-off poster board to give the backdrop and surface a cleaner and more continuous appearance. I used white fabric in these shots and many times the patterns appeared in the background and detracted from the image.
Still, love how my shoe turned out in these shots.
Click here to see these photos up-close
Equipment used:
- 100mm – f/2.8 macro lens
- SV Imagemaker Plus Light Tent
- Two external lamps
- Speedlite 580 exii external flash
- Tripod
Arcade Fire played Phoenix, AZ – Comerica Theater – on April 13, 2011. Great band. Great time. Click here to see the full set of photos from the Arcade Fire show.
This is a real car, driving next to a real man on a real bike in downtown Phoenix. Why does it look like a toy car on a model set? Because I used a miniature faking effect that simulates a shallow depth field and fools your eyes into thinking it’s looking at something up-close.
Another component of the miniature illusion is selective focus, which in its purest form is achieved with tilt-shift photography. However in this case, I faked it with Photoshop and directed your attention to the car in the picture for this miniature effect.
Not bad for a first attempt, although I should have spent more time fiddling around in Photoshop to make the guy on the bike less blurry. This tutorial made it surprisingly easy to achieve this effect.
See more photos like this in this tilt-shift miniature fakes flickr group.
Photo details:
- Exposure: 1/400
- Aperture: f/9.0
- Focal Length: 50 mm
- Taken from the fifth floor of a parking garage at 10am
Tri for Les 2012: Lavaman
