4.08.2013

Shadows and Bread.

The week has started and it's started well. I've cleaned up my studio in anticipation of an assignment that starts at noon tomorrow. Portraits. New people. One of my favorite subjects to photograph. Making my daily "bread." I've got the lighting set up already and I've tested it. I wanted to shoot the portraits with the new fluorescent lights but I've only received one and the background light doesn't arrive until Weds. (I'm so cheap, I went with the free shipping). I'm shooting with flash instead.

I've set up a Elinchrom monolight with a 60 inch Softlighter 2 as my main light. I'm using a second Elinchrom through a small 20 by 30 inch softbox on the grey paper background and another monolight into a 20 inch beauty dish, covered with diffusion, for a hair and back light. The fill is just a big, white flex reflector. I'm thinking broad and modern.

Don't know what it is about the bread shot above that I like. Maybe it's the very defined shadow against the bread and maybe it's just the look of the bread itself. Either way it's like trying to dissect a joke. When broken into its pieces it all falls apart.

Sony a850 with the nasty, old 24-105 Sony lens. I like those two pieces of gear precisely because they are NOT perfect.


2 comments:

Tom Judd said...

It's the "made from scratch" shadow that does it for me.

Ian said...

Michelangelo's dad advised him not to become a sculptor, saying that he would always be dusty 'like a baker'. An insult to the sculptor because a baker had to made bread each day, it was ephemeral, impermanent, passing.

Luckily for us Michelangelo did sculpt, paint and was an architect. His work from 1500 influenced western art for 400 years.

Always persist with your talent.