Chez Spud

Ooooh Camera Club, haven’t done this for a while…have the biscuits gone stale in our absence? Should we get the club going again? Anyone need any help with anything, got a question…if so please leave a comment and I’ll wrap them up in subsequent Camera Club post. I’ve had a few email questions recently too, perhaps I’ll bundle those discussions in to the post too.

So, what did I learn this week? I’ve been doing a photoshoot this week for Gallery Thea, a lovely local ceramics shop and below are just a few of the shots. Thea needed a portfolio of images for promotional purposes: general shots of the gallery, product shots of specific items and some portraits of her. I did two separate shoots; one in the gallery (general shots and portraits) and another at home in my make very shift ‘studio’ (product shots).

The shoot in the gallery was reasonably straightforward, although the light towards the back of the shop is a bit challenging…a little dark and a little ‘yellow’ too. Ideally I’d have turned the lights off for the shot above, but the light was too gloomy back there to take it without an additional light source. Hmm, an additional light source that isn’t overhead spots that can be moved around and controlled…where could I get such a thing?

Conversely, the light at the front of the shop (where there is a lovely big bay window) was very bright, a little harsh in fact although it suits Thea’s white/brights ceramics quite well.  I think something up at the window to diffuse the light would have helped. I know that clear shower curtains are often suggested, and I’d considered taking one along but I couldn’t think how I’d fix it up easily and quickly. Later I discovered that bubble wrap would have been perfect, and one thing a ceramics shop isn’t short of is rolls and rolls of bubble wrap!

We tried some portraits of Thea seated in the window. The light is a bit hard on the side of her face, but we used a gold reflector which has dealt with the worst of the harsh light and also given Thea a nice warm ‘glowy’ look. She’s a bit camera shy, actually she’s very camera shy. I think the portrait shoot was like a kind of living nightmare for her, poor thing! Me: “OK, look up, slightly to the left, lift your chin…ok, try not to look suicidal….” She really didn’t want a traditional head and shoulders looking at the camera and cheesy smile shot, so we went for a more relaxed/candid style. There are lots more portraits but I’ll spare her blushes (by the way, I do have her permission to write this post!).

Lesson I wish I had learnt: how to fold up that damn reflector. It’s a huge circle, it’s supposed to collapse in to a much smaller circle to make it easier to carry around. The only person who knows how to do it is my 4 year old….

Another one taken in the window, with the decorations in the background diffusing the light. By now I was realising that, as I’d feared, ceramics are pretty hard to shoot. They are have a high gloss finish which means they are very reflective, and achieving perfect focus and dealing with the reflections and shadows was a challenge.

Fast forward to later that day, at home, and I start to set up my ‘studio’ to do some product shots (nursery sets and name pictures).  We’d decided that Thea would create some hand-drawn wallpaper to use as a backdrop for the product shots. But we hadn’t really discussed how I should do the set up, or exactly what kind of props I might use. It’s quickly became apparent that I was going to have to experiment with a couple of set ups, take some test shots and get some feedback before doing the shoot ‘for real’. I also spent some time chasing some good light around the house before, finally, settling on the floor of a bedroom. Very professional!

One of the issues the test shots raised was the wallpaper. It wasn’t wide enough, really, to cope with the set up we wanted….and it wasn’t ‘busy’ enough in terms of motifs. It didn’t matter how I tried to rearrange the ceramics on the paper, I would end up with big white gaps. The solution was for me to get busy with a scalpel and cut out some of the motifs and stick them in the gaps. If you look, you can pretty easily spot which ones are ‘stuck’ on. But at the size these images will be used (small) it shouldn’t be obvious. Lesson: probably it would be easier to shoot these kind of ‘set up’ shots with the client present, so they can get busy with a bit of colouring in as necessary.

The other issue was, again, the lack of controllable, even light. The lighting isn’t bad for natural light, diffused with bubble wrap at the windows, but it’s not even, the shadows aren’t really where I’d want them to be and I was at the mercy of the big shiny thing in the sky playing ball and shining. Ponders again…how can I ensure even, controllable light which doesn’t push off for months at a time?

The other problem was that I’d had to push the ISO up to deal with the relative lack of light. That’s made for some pretty chunky jpeg files to deal with. On the plus side, the lovely full-format D700 handles high ISO so well that noise hasn’t become an issue.

Finally, I moved on to the name pictures. Again, the test shots showed the wallpaper had some issues…same thing again, not really wide enough and not busy enough. That, plus slightly creamy coloured tiles and a pure white frame made these pictures especially challenging. I’d thought the reflections might be easier to handle on a ‘flat’ item like this, but in fact it was worse. The set up for these pictures took absolutely ages, I just couldn’t find a way of showcasing the product in a way that wasn’t totally flat and boring, whilst working around the wallpaper issue. After a lot of fiddling around and swearing, I finally settled on the angled approach shown above.

Other things I learned: product shots involve a LOT of blue tack. Blue tack to hold background paper in place, to hold products in place, to hold eggs in egg cups to stop them disappering. It also involves random items from around the house studio….a jar of mustard to prop the plate up…a block from the boys’ toy box to rest the name picture on to angle it up…slippers and bottles of perfume to stop the paper rolling up in to shot. It was all very high tech!

But what I really learned is that, much as I adore natural light, I’m going to have to use flash in the future for these kinds of shoots. I need to be able to have a reliable, controllable, portable source of light.

With thanks to Thea for being a super client. Looking forward to the next shoot. With flash (a-aah he’ll save every one of us).

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