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Hard light vs soft light and how it applies to still life, food and product photography

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The concept of hard vs soft light comes up all the time, particularly on YouTube, but it’s typically in relation to portraits and other photographs of people. It’s rarely given much air time when it comes to other genres where you have control over the light, like food and product photography or still life.

But in this video from V-Flat World, commercial product and food photographer Hudi Greenberger walks us through the principles of hard and soft light, how we can apply them to our small scale scenes and the overall effect that different relative sizes of light source will have on your shot.

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Food photographers, upgrade your modifiers before you upgrade anything else

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You’ve been into photography for a while, you’ve upgraded your skills, and it’s time to upgrade your gear. If you ask me, that’s always exciting, but it can also be stressful: what should you upgrade first? In this video, Scott Choucino discusses this topic and helps you choose between your lens, camera, light, or modifier. And to some of you, the answer may be surprising.

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How still life came to photography

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A while back, I had another roundtable discussion at the Film Photographers Association. This time the subject was Still Life Photography. It is a genre we all take for granted and include in it a great variety of photographs. I would like to explore the origins of still life in painting, how it came to photography, and eventually expanded in coverage and scope. Mind you, I do not intend to limit anyone’s vision but to make the reader a bit more aware of the origins of still life. And, by no means, is it the last word on the subject.

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Make your own DIY diffusion panels for still life photography

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Light diffusion panels cost very little when you make them yourself, and to do so is very simple. I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked about diffusion panels and where I am getting them from. The ones I use in my studio have all been custom-made to fit my needs, and I’ll show you just how to make your own one below.

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Photographer turns to light bulbs for this fantastic “Yin Yang” themed image

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Photographing light bulbs is a long established photographic technical exercise. They present pretty much every lighting problem a photographer can face. You have to deal with reflections, refractions, surface brightness, and even illumination from within the bulb itself.

Brazilian Photographer Alexandre Watanabe decided to take the familiar light bulb a step further this time, though. To photograph it perfectly on either black or white isn’t easy. To be able to do it on both and present it so well is very impressive.

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Make your own light tent out of a cardboard box and household items

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Light tents can be a wonderful thing. They’re certainly not going to get your best product photos, but they’re a great way to photograph a lot of things quickly. Once they’re set up, you just keep swapping items out as you shoot. Light tents aren’t always that expensive, either. You can pick them up online fairly inexpensively. But then you have to wait for them to show up.

So, what can you do to get shooting right now? Well, you can make your own. Like photographer Doug McKinlay does in this video. It’ll cost you virtually nothing to make, as you’ll probably have most of the required items in your home already. And, best of all, you won’t need to wait for the delivery guy.

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It’s amazing what you can do with cutlery, a glass ball and a perforated metal sheet

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Howard Ashton-Jones has often spoken about the importance of personal work outside of his main work as the official photographer for Scottish Gymnastics.  Personal work allows us to explore new techniques, new genres, new styles.

It helps us to learn and develop as photographers, broadening our experiences and gives us valuable information that we can take back and attempt to apply to the subjects we normally photograph, to try to push ourselves and our imagery just that bit further.

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How to Shoot Glitter (Or To Get It Pre-Made And Avoid The Mess)

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With all my years as a photographer I’ve learned one thing. Nothing makes people happier than Glitter. Seriously, If you want to make a photo glamours, happy or just give it a sparkling tone, you can use some Glitter to make that happen.

Of course, shooting Glitter is a whole other story. We took the opportunity to write a short tutorial on how we actually shot it.

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How To Create A Land Cross Section Photo In The Studio

When we were asked to produce some creative product shots for a new client, I thought Challenge accepted! The product was an awesome high end cross country trainer with incredible grip on various surfaces and was to be photographer while not been worn.

I wanted to show multiple surfaces, but from a different perspective so decided to create a quick and dirty land cross section to sit the trainer on.

Here’s how to do it and it only cost a grand total of £10 to build.

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Step by step guide for Composite Product Photography

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Usually, I prefer to get stuff in camera (even if it means light painting my subject). But sometimes Lighting or space limitations will make getting the picture in-camera hard or simply not worth the effort. When such situation strikes go for a composite. If you only have little gear, this technique will also help you get a more professional look in your images.

To demonstrate this point, I used my girlfriends Macbook air and my Fuji Xe-2.

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Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

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