For some weird reason I always think about the articles I’m going to write when I’m taking a shower. So last week I thought about making the bathroom the subject for my article.
I am gong to share an interesting excessive you can execute with no help probably today to hone your photography and lighting skills. Ready? Here is the challenge. Pick 3-4 items from inside a single room (it can be the living room, kitchen, bathroom, garage and so on) and use those items as your subjects. I wanted to do this so that I could just practice my photography (Practice makes perfect, remember?) and also challenge myself to get up and shoot. (It also serves as some sort of proof that I use a shower).
These are the things I chose to shoot. Toothpaste, shampoo, facial wash, and a shaver.
The Shaver
First subject I choose to shoot was a shaver. I knew that I wanted to just shoot this with one light. The first thing I did was to get my DIY Honeycomb and just pointed the light directly at the shaver.
Diy Honeycomb pointed directly at the shaver. failed
I didn’t like the way it turned out because it didn’t have the spunk that I wanted, but I was still determined to only use one light for this shot. So I got my studio strobe and used the reflection of the seamless paper to get the effect that I wanted.
Setup Shot. I pointed my studio strobe at the white seamless paper and used the reflection of the granite tile to get the gradient effect of the light on the background.
The Final Shot
The Facial Wash
I liked the glossy black look of the facial wash and knew that I wanted to shoot this black on black. The first things I did was placing two softboxes left and right to get some rim lighting.
Two softboxes left and right for rim lighting.
After that I used my DIY honeycomb to highlight the front of the subject. I hand-held the speedlight so that I could aim the light properly without getting the reflection of my light on the subject.
I used a black illustration board for my black background. Two softboxes were placed left and right of the subject for rim lighting and for the main light I handheld a speedlight with a DIY honeycomb
Facial Wash Final Shot
The Shampoo
For the shampoo shot I wanted to play around with gels. The first thing I did was placed an sb-600 with cyan gel and Stofen Omnibounce (for gradient effect).
Cyan Gel on the background
After that I placed a softbox on the left of the subject for the main light.
I added a softbox on the left of the subject for the main light
I wanted to fill the shadow on the right and add some highlights so I placed another softbox on the right side to get some highlights going.
Final Setup for this Set.
Cyan gel on the background with stofen omnibounce and two softboxes left and right fot the mainlight and highlight. I also used illustration board as my base
The shot I got with the 3 lights
After some cleaning in Photoshop for the vignette on the upper side and sprayed a little water on the bottle.
Final Shot
The Toothpaste
I am working on a new DIY setup so just to test it out (it isn’t done yet) I wanted to shoot using it. I wanted to have a really bright light coming from the back, so I placed the big mama at the back to get a good backlight. For the main light I used a speedlight and a shoot thru umbrella.
Big mama at the back of the subject for the backlight, and speedlight shoot thru umbrella at the front for the mainlight
Final Shot
Practice is very important in photography, even the simplest exercise of practicing your lighting will benefit you in the future.
Your Turn!
share with us any house hold items you practice-shot.
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