Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
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.
Sometimes you need an on-white photo, especially if you are shooting products. But not always there is an on-white setup available. This of course if you don’t count the bathtub.
Polish strap maker Eupidere needed to take some photos of their newly released leather straps. They opted out of studio / table top session and instead chose to do perfect on white shots in a bathtub. The tab triples as a tripod, table top and reflector.
The only element that was added to make this a perfect studio was a small collapsible screem.
The results are amazingly good:
When you want to shoot a piece of jewelry or a beer can or a wine bottle or just about any product there is a good chance you will be using a table top. Table top, as the name implies, is a flat top that you can put stuff on. We’ve shown various table tops on several projects here; a piece of glass and a granite tile were two of the more popular ones. But what if you need something sturdier. Sturdy enough to place things on, yet, flexible enough so it neatly stores away and does not take any space when unused.
Alex Koloskov of Photigy.com shares a pretty neat hack (or mod) to create an easy-to-store, easy-to-use table top. His trick using a baby plate, originally used for mounting strobes on walls to attach a top to a light stand – aside the stand, those plates are as cheap as $10 to $35 depending on the brand and specific model.
One of the simplest yet most used items in my photography toolbox is simple black granitle tile. I bought a small one 3 years ago and I am still using it today. I have a small tile that I bought for $4 and a bigger one that I got for $20. Other people use plexiglass or just a simple glass table for this kind of look.
Normally I use the granite tile for my product or still life shots. Here are just some things that you can do with the granite
tile.[Read More…]
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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