Monday 4 August 2014

Make it easy on yourself

Getting technical with artificial lighting has always baffled me. I might have mentioned this before, but I have finally discovered a way that works for me to photograph 'products'. It works because it's dead simple. No light stands, no umbrellas or softboxes, just the one flash gun on the camera.


Place object on white paper, flip the flash head round to point at the white ceiling, boost the output by one and a third stop, set the camera to overexpose the meter reading by one stop and off you go. Easy to correct minor exposure errors or make the background pure white in post. Good enough for me! Anyone want to buy a couple of flashguns, light stands and umbrellas?

One great piece of advice in On Being a Photographer - David Hurn and Bill Jay is that when deciding on a project it should be practical to work on. My loosely defined 'parking' project is just that. There's subject matter almost everywhere. Signs, in particular, interest me in any case. So I photograph ones that relate to parking. The last few days have got me a couple which I'm liking at the moment and which might be pushing me in a new direction.





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