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Shoot: Daylight and Augmented Daylight

Lesson 6 from: Tabletop Photography Fundamentals

Andrew Scrivani

Shoot: Daylight and Augmented Daylight

Lesson 6 from: Tabletop Photography Fundamentals

Andrew Scrivani

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Lesson Info

6. Shoot: Daylight and Augmented Daylight

Lesson Info

Shoot: Daylight and Augmented Daylight

The thing that's nice about this when you set up the infinity curve like this is that regardless of whether it's sitting on it or actually behind it and creating that illusion of depth, it doesn't make a difference really I mean it's still going to do the same job like we're suspending this here and um so what I'm going to try to do is not get the whole bag I'm going to get a detailed look I'm going to try to get like from right under the graphic to about the middle of the handles so it gives you the idea of what it is and how it works and the fact that it's flowing naturally because it's being held, you know, with gravity but we don't need to see everything and maybe this is a better option for us because we're not really completely comfortable with the way the fabric is folded or the fact the way it opens up when you put things in it and you want to show it in a better light so we'll try that maybe tweak it a little bit I kind of like that see it there it is um I wanted to try to str...

aighten out this this side here kind of get a little bit of a natural fall and I don't mind twisting a little you know, what's gonna happen right? I'm gonna go home I'm going to start eating, I'm going to start dictating everything I'm doing. First I'm gonna put forth in my mouth and then I'm going to chew on food. Once I'd done chewing on the food, I'm going to swallow it. How many choose how many choose how many licks that you get from a six year old year old? Well, andrew, while you're shooting, speaking of dictating, john, could you explain a little bit about what you did with when when you were handling the bag there with wire? Well, we have a very small piece of wire, so I was just trying to make it tight and not puncture my fingers. Ok? We had a little more string or something probably been easier to tie it up there, but it's just tied onto the bar, okay, nothing special. Awesome, thank you. So you could see now we got to kind of have that that look, which might actually work nicely for your website as well. Instead of showing the entire product, you know again, the graphic is the big selling point and the fact that it's a tote bag. We lose a little bit of weight, lose a little bit of the scale because you know, when you buy those big land's end bags or it could be this big or they could be is biggest, you know, I think I put my two year old and one at one point it's much, much, much easier than a baby born beyond but so let's get this and you know what? Let's, try something let's take everything out now and do one last shot with this where we don't have anything in and we'll see how it how it falls or maybe wait could do something a little more conceptual let's just see if this will work at all. Um, I like michael jordan like to stick my tongue out when I'm working get something with that exactly right? That is it that's again a nice conceptual scale use of propping to show what this thing is good for and then it would be cut off as well. But would that be, except absolutely as long as you could see the handles and you can kind of see the graphic and you see what it's doing? You're putting the whole of the the idea into into play, right? So I'm looking at this and this will not work hanging here without any stuffing in it because the graphic it's really distorted and such but the other thing I might do in this situation is like, rig a wire inside here and push it out because when I do this, it looks pretty good you can really see the graphic, but maybe we can hang a few of them, you know, and hang them together like this, you know, like if you were hanging them on, if I was propping this out, possibly I might get a wooden peg board and then hang each one on a wooden peg board against the wall like it looks like it might be at home. So I mean, there's, a lot of options. I liked your idea of showing a bag at sticking out of it. Or maybe something else or maybe something cute, like a puppy. I don't know. I mean, it could be anything but let's. Let's, switch over to our iphone and let's, put the tea towel back up on dh show how maybe we can do a collaborative photo for our art director who is across the country telling us what we we shouldn't shouldn't do while we're moving through this. Yes, I am talking about someone in particular. Okay, so from when I was my phone. Okay, I think this is gonna work airplay buffet, it's working great, okay, so we're gonna go to the camera okay, so now our light is what we'll do that hey, look, everyone okay? I'm goingto I like to shoot in a square format let's say I want to share this on instagram right? So I'm gonna do a square format I'm gonna kind of zoom right into my product and I love nice look to it and bank I might need to rotate it and there it is okay, so now I have that that was a kind of a neat trick, right and that's something that we can do in a lot of these situations where we have steady lighting we kind of popped into ah little bit of a post production program just pumped up the contrast a little bit so the darks and the lights would separate a little bit. We get a little bit of a a better detail out of it and that's perfectly acceptable to show to somebody that you're trying to collaborate with let's say you have a buyer that's looking for to buy them on display them in their store or whatever it's a nice quick way to do it especially fuel light is right because the cameras in here are not bad so the reality is that we totally work with that the last thing I want to go over if before take any quick questions is that whole idea of augmented daylight so if we were in a situation where we had a really dark side and a really light side so if we we had shifted this table over here and we had the light coming in from one side because that was our only option, what we might do is mount a we're going to need this one I'll get another stay we'll use this one it's fine. Um we would mount one of these household lights that's sort of the segway into what we're going to do in our next segment about the d I y set up, we're going to mount ah clamp light with this bulb that looks blue. Well, it is blue doesn't look blue and it's um, it's going to burn at around forty four hundred kellman, which is a lot closer to daylight and it is forty five hundred kelvin, which is a lot closer to daylight and it's a good mixing light for doing something like this, so if you don't have the opportunity to push a really good phil back with phil card, you might have to do something like this and you augment they like to clean up the shadows in a particular image way might be able to just throw a piece of white up here to show how this might knock a shadow back, so if we put the white here, wait, get an object that mike possibly throw shadow! You could see how we have shadow pretty much all around it, but as we know, we have that coming in that way and we can kind of modify this one of our other d I y things that were going to talk about in our next segment, this filter and by putting this in, you could see how this is shadow dramatically drops off, and now we still have one more opportunity in adding a phil card on the opposite side. That's not right. This is to try to knock that shadow down even further, so way might still want a little bit of a drop shadow. We just don't want it to be really harsh. So what we've done here, we've softened the shadow and then here we softening it even further still. So we still have a little bit of a drop shadow. We've created a little bit of a light box and that way still have directionality see that's the nice part of you still have a soft thing. We have plenty of phil like butt and we have directionality, but we don't have a really harsh, like deep shadow, as if direct sunlight or direct strobe light or whatever is coming off that so you could see that. We have a really nice balance, like there between the diff l turd day lightbulb, the light that we're getting coming through the window, so we have a nice and mixed light in the room that's going to really help us so that's the kind of natural step up from complete daylight with phil cards, we can kind of sometimes use something like this to demonstrate, uh, the idea that we have limited daylight, but we can add to it, and then from there we can learn how to start to build light from scratch. So I think that's, where we're going to end up in our next segment, so we still have a few minutes to go, so I want to take some questions and see how we're doing fantastic. Well, you're doing great that eleven in we were question from tyler harrington from richmond, virginia, when shooting products for a website that constantly uses a white background. How do you handle white or clear objects? No. Well, we're going to deal with that in in another segment, for sure, but I think that, uh, white clear objects on white are challenging, but it's not impossible. The use of black cards outside of your frame will add edge to the outside because remember what we talked about, right? Your glassy objects have eyes and what they need to see is something that has definition. So even though you're against the white background, using black cards will let the glass look at those those black cards and create edges to your glass objects. That's the best way I found to do that when you have to shoot against white because you're probably going to be used in a silhouette herbal situation. Um, the other thing that I've done in the past is you the ring light, which is an interesting tool. The light mounts around the lens throws a very soft light at something and it's something that they use for people more than objects. But the reality is it's something that could also work thank you. S oh, from hoke photo do you find yourself in a situation where you need to flatten a particular product and you step back and use the longer lands to help bring things to a little even steven? Sure, I think that that's something we were kind of playing with here a little bit where we going to flatten out the object and then zoom into it with a longer lens to kind of stay out of the way of the light and be ableto have the opportunity to kind of crop in in camera to where we want to be, the macro lenses will help you in that regard to and the longer lenses to get closer to your subject from a little bit of a dick and so you stay out of your lighting path cool thank you great! And we have a question from pics if you have any, um any considerations when shooting shiny objects are shining textiles like satin specifically was wait satin on await background I think that's where you start to think about the angle of origination when it comes to light and how to balance that out. And when we're in the segment, I think tomorrow where we're shooting something that's reflective on four sides, those principles will help you understand that in all regards, you have to understand that also, when you're talking about shiny objects let's talk about a sequin dress, right all sequins or not pointing in the same direction they're moving, they're flowing and you're going tohave catch lights and it's going to see that light from a lot of different angles. The same thing would fasten jewelry right the facets of pointing in all different directions it's about finding the best shimmer, the best catch light situation and that's where the shape of your lights comes into play and sometimes when you have an object that shiny like that, you might want to use it really, really big, soft box so everything looks similar, like the catch lights all the way the same or you might want to use something smaller and defuse it so that it flattens it out a little bit better. So we're going to talk a lot about shiny objects and glassware in coming segments for sure. Fantastic. Paolo, you put your life at the moment, kind from almost from behind the camera, it's that what did you do that just for the textiles? Or would you pretty much do that for all sorts of, well, that's, you know, that's interesting is that I wouldn't shoot like food this way with anything I wanted to get dimension on. I probably wouldn't. I would've set this table of sideways, but because it was the textiles and because we wanted a flat, even light, I put it up from behind me, which is a very unusual perspective for daylight for me, but because we're shooting a different type of subject that's where that particular lighting angle came into play for sure.

Class Materials

bonus material

Tabletop Photography Lighting Plots.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Pat O'Reilly
 

One of the the best courses from Andrew. He is my hero in all of his photography work. He is a natural. I love how he engages with the students online and in the live studio audience too. He knows his stuff. He is a great teacher with a great way of teaching - very real and authentic. With all of that experience -he has been great in imparting that knowledge to us and I’m forever grateful for that. Thank you very much Andrew and team.

a Creativelive Student
 

I was pleased to see real life situations and set ups, their work arounds and the little fiddly things all commercial/product photographers go through to produce a viable shot. Unlike some of the other reviews, the "oops, it didn't work, let's try this instead" was totally real world and believable. So many times on other teaching venues, the shot is already set up and perfected before the instruction begins. It was extremely helpful to watch the processes that were involved in producing the correct captures. I was impressed with the humor and teaching style as well, especially for the time constraints in a classroom setting. The student set-ups and critiques were valuable and spot on without being negative in any way. All-in-all this was one of the best classes I've viewed at Creative Live. I just wish I could have had three more days and to have been there in person for the one-on-one instruction.

Ernst
 

Thank you Andrew. Great class. Learned a lot. Great instructor. Only wish there were more segments using flash rather than the very expensive gear. But, the principles are the same.

Student Work

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