This was a shot that had been kicking around in my head for the past week or two, and I only just got around to shooting it tonight. (If you spend much time online, I’m guessing you already know what it’s referencing.) I knew it had been a few days since I had shot anything particularly creative, and while I have some shoots coming up that I’m looking forward to, you can’t always find a model on short notice.
(By the way: 99% of the time, my posts will include photographs of people. (See tagline in upper-left.) This post is an exception.)
So I set this one up in my apartment. I ran in to several challenges, but I’m really pleased with the end result. The following is just nerd junk, complete with setup shot.
I don’t know if this photo looks deceptively simple, all I know is that I spent about two hours more than I expected to get this shot. But I learned some good stuff even from such a spur-of-the-moment execution.
I knew what I wanted the end result to look like: The most literal representation of Apple and Flash. That meant, easily enough, an apple and a flash. Since strobes don’t turn brown when you bite into them, that’s where I began setting up this shot. And if you’re going to have a strobe as one of your two subjects anyway, you might as well have it light the other while you’re at it.
Unfortunately, that meant I couldn’t use my Vivitar flash — while I consider it more photogenic than a 580ex due to its retro-cool look, it only powers down to 1/16. Since I was going to have the apple pressed right up against that flash, I had to use something that went down much further; in this case, I had it set all the way down to 1/128.
I knew I’d have a tough time lighting the flash. With only two lights to work with tonight and no backdrop to light, I’d have to light a black subject against a black background. I went for a kind of rim-light effect, and while I’m pleased with how that turned out, it took an awfully long time to get it right.
Part of the difficulty was aiming the second light. First I tried with a snoot, but that was too narrow (or my aim was too poor). Then I tried, just for kicks, using an umbrella to see if the soft look was anything nice. It kind of was, but I was spilling light all over the place — and in my tiny apartment, a little light will bounce all over the place. In the end, I used a ripped-up cereal box as a gobo and that worked perfectly. Check the setup shot at the right to get a better look. (Click for bigger.)
Immediately apparent, too, is that both of my lights are on the right, and I’ve got an entire left side of the image to light. As mentioned before, the flash that’s in the frame does a fine job of lighting one side of the apple. Yeah, it’s at 1/128 power, but the apple’s only six inches away. To properly expose the apple at full power, I’d have to stop down to about f/320!
Sidenote: I ended up having to work in the neighborhood of f/11 – f/16, which is a good bit smaller than I’m accustomed to working with. I rarely go above f/5.6, and f/8 is almost an “upper limit” in my mind. Tonight I became reacquainted with poor color saturation and really saw just how much dust is living on my sensor.
Anyway, back to that apple. The right side was exposed just fine, maybe a little overexposed, even. But I didn’t want the left edge to fade off into the darkness. (And with the flash that close, light would have fallen off really fast.) I took a quick glance around and I found a perfectly sized envelope of junk mail, or maybe it was my retirement benefits, or something. Regardless, I found it to be way more useful as a bounce card, and you can see that it was pretty effective.
The strobe, though lit well on the topside, was lacking definition on the bottom that it sorely needed to be recognizable as anything at all, let alone a professional flash unit. I found a super-reflective bit of cardboard that had come with some chocolate, or maybe some take-out or something. I have a habit of hanging on to this kind of thing, and tonight, I felt justified in doing so. It gave just the right amount of definition on the bottom of the flash when I could angle it correctly.
Oh, and that apple. Mounting it was a bit of a challenge in itself. It’s easy enough to slap a strobe on top of a lightstand, but there are no apple-stands. This was just about the last thing I did for the shot, and I was kind of stymied. I guess I could have lowered the lightstand to make this whole task easier, but I ended up skewering the apple with a pickle fork (yes, that’s a real thing) which was taped to the inside of a cardboard paper towel tube which was taped to a stool (you can see it near the bottom of the setup shot) which was set on top of a chair.
Yeah, maybe I should’ve just lowered the lightstand.
I was disappointed that I needed to remove the slightest bit of pickle fork and tape from the bottom of the photo in Photoshop, but I got over it. In a perfect world, I would have mounted the apple using something attached to its back (like David Hobby did in this photo illustration of a CFL bulb), but I thought of that too late.
And that, friends, is a blog post far too long for a simple photograph!