lights

So one of our most recent assignments in school was to shoot a product on location. Now this could be taken very broadly. But the way that I chose to portray this assignment was to shoot the product that I selected to shoot in a type of environment that you would normally see it in. Places like college football games, basket, ball games, etc. Well the other day I went out to my local park and tried to give it a shot.

My original plan was to photograph the bottle of Gatorade from a face on angle. The lighting how ever was going to be off to the camera left side. In order to soften the light from the off camera flash I had put a stofan box on the flash so that the light would be diffused. With that, I also put a ripped open plastic bag over the flash for more delusion. Below you can see the set up. Primitive as it may be it worked.

If you look over to your left, yes this is a pretty primitive set up, BUT it did the job. Here is basically the set up that I will show you in another picture diagram later on. I set the Gatorade bottle down on the tar mak with the basket ball goal behind it (I was shooting landscape, so you couldn’t see the goal either way.) Once the Gatorade bottle was positioned correctly in the frame (with the big “G”being front and center) i positioned the flash about 90 degrees of an angle from the bottle itself. Now, I didn’t have the basket ball I originally wanted to use, so I chose a red bull to try to add a little bit more to the frame. I Was going for that “I choose Gatorade, over the “status quo” of an “red bull” Well. I think it worked out pretty well. In the next diagram. I will show you my directions and intentions in the shoot. At the end of this posting I will show you some of my final images.

When you click on the image to your left you will be able to see what I am talking about a lot better. Basically, as you see in the diagram, the camera is positioned where the lens hood is sitting. The lens itself is pointed towards the Gatorade bottle. It is zoomed out at about 28mm’s, the widest that the lens is capable of going. Focusing the camera on the Gatorade bottle I took the picture. It was bland just having the one bottle in there, so I added two; I put a red bull can in there. I was going for that “my drink gives me more energy then yours.

When I shot it, I didn’t account for the back ground be slightly busier then I wanted to be so I tried to use the shutter to tone down the back ground so it wouldn’t be that distracting. But, it was, so anyways. To like the bottle I used my external flash, put a stofan box on it (I wanted to soften the light as much as I could) and then I also put a a plastic, not so see-through bag over it too to help disperse as well. And that seemed to work. To help kick light back in on the other side of the bottle as well as the ground. I used my milk jug filled with water to act as a bounce to bring a TINY little back in and it feels like did. Below are some of my finals. Take a look.

The look that I was going for, I was getting the only thing is HOW I had everything positioned and that of course at this time; hands and or people cannot be in the frame of the shot. So that is the one thing. I will be going back out tonight to photograph. This time on a tennis court. But ill possibly be going to buy a basket ball. We shall see. Hope you enjoyed everything!

Ok, so the last post that I did was a primitive effort of light painting. It was my first attempt an honestly it did not come out well. Heck it honestly wasn’t even in focus and I did not realize that till after the fact. Either way, I went over to Ashley’s (My Girlfriend) house an did the shot I have been wanting to do all a long. Although there was a twist too it. Originally I was going to do it from a wide-angle showing the shed and possibly a tree house a swing set that she has in her back yard. It turned out a little differently. I got to her house after I left school, went on the deck to kind of visualize what I wanted and saw it.

I decided to set up on the deck instead of in the grass. There was a chair sitting in what was a garden that her dad tends too at certain times of the year, so I figured it would be a very cool thing to go along with the barn/shed she has behind it. Over to the left is the final image that I came out of the that night with. This was a total of about 10 images all put together. I am really glad to how it came out and that Chair for some reason helped the image out A LOT. Helps draw your eye around all of the image. I hope you guys enjoy it!