Still Life

Recently I've not been feeling so well and so haven't ventured outdoors in the heat (36degC+). Instead I've been trying out some new lighting effects on still lifes. The first two images are taken with a backlight. Getting the right light takes a bit of trial and error. Moving the object closer or further away from the background, moving the camera closer or further away, adjusting the light output all have an effect, but the biggest change comes with the size of the light placed behind the transparent background. Oh yeah, I added an orange filter to the speedlight and some red food dye to the water in the glass.





This image of Thai curry was taken with one diffused overhead light and one large diffused light to the left of the camera. I used a large aperture to make the noodles slightly out of focus.


The image of the mango was taken with similar lighting to the curry, but with an additional light under the transparent table. The mango pieces were held together with tooth picks, that I later cloned out using PS.




This mobile had one over head diffused light and one large diffused light to the left of the camera to give a faint shadow and provide a little depth.




What I discovered during this exercise was that the only way to keep the reflections and shadows to a minimum was to double diffuse the speedlights. I was using some cheap softboxes I had bought from China, but the material wasn't diffusing the light nearly enough, so I added some kitchen baking paper - I feel the lights could still be softer for bright surfaces but in the other objects it worked well.