I’ve not had access to a proper studio since I left TAFE (college) where I abused, I mean used the excellent facilities. Now working from home I have to make do with whatever is around the house and a few well-chosen bits of photo kit. In the above pic I’m doing a product shot of back pack in the sitting room. I don’t have a white infinity curve on a product table so I use a small Ikea coffee table covered in a white shower curtain and a white double sheet as the background. I want the backpack on a white fore ground and against a white background. Experience has taught me that if a light the background with a flash gun (speed light to our American readers) and over expose by 1 stop it will show as pure white. The subject is lit by two flash guns in brolly boxes arranged at 45º to each other. The camera sits on a tripod and the flashes are triggered wirelessly using a Phottix Odin transmitter. Unlike a lot of photographers I shoot using TTL control and use flash exposure compensation on each flash to control the lighting ratio which in this case is 2:1 or the key light (the black brolly) is set to be twice as powerful as the fill light. All very simple really.
Canon EOS 550D, Sigma 105 f2.8 macro lens. 1x Canon 550EX speedlite firing through an umbrella as fill light positioned camera left. 1 x Canon 430EX speedlite firing through a Lumiquest soft box. Both flashes triggered by a Canon ST-E2 with E-TTL. Exposure: 1/200 s at f/8.0 ISO 100 in manual mode with -1 FEC. Lighting ratio 2:1.
I must admit that summer is my least productive time. Generally it is very hot here in York with temperatures over 40℃ (104℉) and this I feel is not really conducive to any form of artistic inclination. Endless blue skies and the intensity of the sunlight also make for boring photos. So my attentions wander to the studio and I play around with still life, this way I’m in air-conditioned comfort and I’m still able to take photos. I happen to believe that like many activities if you don’t keep practicing your skills will diminish. Still life is a very interesting genre as it forces us to make a photo rather than take a photo as you are in control of everything. Composition and lighting is everything in photography and I think the skills learnt with still life transfer to other genres.
The kitchen studio
Behind the scenes shot of the set up for the shot “Potted Feathers” showing the lighting.
You don’t need anything elaborate to do this. I tend to work on the kitchen table. Backdrops are made from old sheets, some of which I have painted, that are suspended by ‘A’ clamps from the exposed beams in the ceiling. Unfortunately my kitchen is not orientated to make the best of available light and the windows are very small so I rely on artificial light sources namely flash. I already had a couple of speedlites in my camera kit so it made sense to use them as the light source. I raided E-Bay for stands and light modifiers as I didn’t want to drop a bundle. For $70 AUD I got a couple of light stands, 2 shoot through umbrellas and I made my reflectors from off cuts of mounting board.
Behind the scenes shot of the set up for the shot “Potted Feathers” showing the lighting.
Behind the scenes shot of the set up for the shot “Potted Feathers” showing the lighting.
Subject matter is usually anything to hand. Found objects, knick knacks, fruit, vegetables, tools, books anything can be used. It’s a case of once you’ve found something thing about how you’re going to light it so as to bring out it’s character. You could explore the various traditions of still life and use your compositions as allegories to tell stories or illustrate issues that are relevant to you. I find it really engrossing and time passes really quickly as I play around with the composition and lighting. As I said previously I primarily work on the kitchen table shooting small stuff. For anything that is potentially messy I move out to the shed. But if you have the room you could create really large tableaux. For some inspiration a mate of mine, Jules, has fashioned a series of travel photos that look like late 19th Century postcards from Indochina. He drew his inspiration from David Levinthal who has established a whole fine arts practice from this. Have you got access to Lego or other toys, well Mike Stimpson has built a whole photographic practice out of it.
If you like playing with food then see what English photographer Carl Warner does in the video below.
So next time you’re stuck in the house at a loose end give still life a go. You’ll have some fun, increase your understanding of composition and how to use light and who knows maybe you might be so enamored with it that you become a still life maestro.
Back in the long distant past if you wanted to demonstrate your photo skills the photographing a white egg on a white background using flash and transparency film preferably on a large format 4×5 camerawas the way to do it. Totally manual exposure taking into account the mag factor. Understanding that a sheet of Fuji Provia 100 only had 6 stops of dynamic range. Now it is depressingly easy to shoot in these digital times with E-TTL flash metering and LCD displays with histograms. But then all this techno goodness should free us to make wonderful art.
Canon EOS5d, Sigma 105 f2.8 macro, Canon 550EX & 430 EX Speedlites fired wirelessly by a Canon ST-E2.
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