Project365 - Still Life

Introduction

When budding painters first start taking classes, the first thing they seem to paint is the fruit basket. Like a computer programmer learning to print out "Hello world !" on the screen, it seems to be a right of passage. Since the weather turned crummy in a hurry today, I thought I would follow in those budding artists footsteps !

The Setup

Camera - Canon 60D, Flash - Canon Speedlite 430 EX II, Triggers - Cactus v5s

I like to shoot in the dining room, as the overhead tungsten light is on a dimmer switch. Just like I can vary the light from my flash in manual mode, so can I vary the output of the overhead. So effectively, I end up with a two light system - ambient and strobe. The bowl of fruit remained fairly constant, while I varied the flash quite a bit. Let's take a look:

The Photos

In this photo, done early on, I was nailing down the intensity of the flash. I was overwhelming the ambient light at 1/16 power ! So I brought up the overhead light a smidge (a HIGHLY technical term), and lowered the power of the flash. The colours are bright, but with harsh shadows.

Just for giggles, this is just the ambient light. If I wasn't careful, the grapefruit and the tabletop were the same colour ! The photo is flat, as there isn't much contrast. Yawn !

This photo has the colours brighter and some contrast, due to the flash to the back right of the fruit bowl. But alas, the flash was too low & close to the table, washing it with harsh light. Blech !

 

This photo is bright, and the observant among you will notice I shifted the fruit around. I find this more pleasing to the eye. I put a snoot on the flash, in an attempt to lighten up the shadow under the front of the howl. It worked, but you can see reflections in the fruit !

I think that this is one of the best. The fruit is bright & clear. The two light sources are not competing, and the food looks appetizing. There are no harsh shadows or huge reflections.

Lessons Learned

While this wasn't a particularly interesting shoot, it allowed me to work through some of the fundamental theories of strobe photography. I played with everything from lighting angle to distance, to balancing the two light sources. After some 65 photos, I started to get a bit intuitive of how the photos might turn out !

I have been reading some colour theory, which would indicate that I might consider putting gels in front of my flash, to compensate for different types of light. Did you notice that only in the FIRST photo did the oak table actually look brown, rather than orange ? The strobe was at a very low angle to the table, so it wasn't really lit by the strobe.

I have read that trying to use a white strobe against a fluorescent ambient will produce a green tinge, while white strobe on incandescent produces an orange tinge - like we see in these images ! Yes, I know I can correct for them in post-processing, but not this year. =D