Exceptions
For assignment number 3 of Project 52, a great photography learning project run by Photographer Don Gianatti over at Lighting Essentials we had to create a still life photograph. It sounds simple and straight forward doesn’t it? This should be a piece of cake! And like the commercials always say, “But wait! There’s more!” Isn’t there always?
There were two catches to the image that we created for this assignment. First we needed to keep track of our time in creating the photograph – coming up with a concept, performing the shoot, post processing, etc. The reason is that in order to start knowing what to charge for photography you need to understand how long a job will actually take. The second catch was that we had to shoot for a specific layout. What does that mean? Well, in our assignment we need to provide an image that fit a certain format for a brochure that would have text in a predefined location. This means that we had to he careful with how we composed our photograph so that the components in the image did not interfere with the layout of the brochure.
For some reason I found that a box of wooden matches that I had around the house just kept popping into my mind as I thought about this assignment. I looked at them several times, and just did not find anything interesting about them – they were simply a box of wooden matches, and not an interesting box at that. Then I did something stupid, and the end result was a pile of wooden matches out of the box and all over my bedroom floor. As I picked them up one by one it struck me (yes, bad pun intended) that one match was pretty interesting. The tones and grain of the wooden stick, the color of the red and the amazing detailed texture of the match head. I knew I had my subject for my still life.
To make this image interesting I knew that how it was lit was going to be a big factor. While big, soft light is the way to go, for my little match I wanted something different. I really wanted to see one side of the match lit up, while the other side needed to be in deep shadow. I decided to use a bare flash, so that it was a small light source to get the lighting that I wanted. Add a little fill from the opposite side as the flash and a hair light from behind to help pop the match head and I was in business. Here are the details on the lighting setup:
580 EXII bare 90 degrees camera right to get a strong contrast on the two visible sides of the match stick. At 1/32 power about 18 inches from subject.
White fill card camera left and in front to throw some light back onto the shadow side of the match stick
SB-28 camera left, above and behind as a hair light with a grid at 1/32 power to provide some rim to the head of the match.
100mm macro lens, camera settings at f/16. ISO 200, and 1/200th of a second
In the end, I ended up with a much different photograph then I had planned on, simply because I dropped a box of matches on the floor. Keeping an open mind allowed me to see the potential in a single matchstick that I may have never noticed. Enjoy!