Lighting Secrets

I love lighting -- and two recent assignments from Wells & Drew, a maker of fine, engraved stationery, gave me an opportunity to create a few hundred macro images: tight close-ups to which I applied several different lighting techniques.

Wells & Drew wanted me to capture the fine texture of the paper and show off the remarkable detail of their beautiful, raised engraving.



So to create an almost tactile feeling in my photographs, I sent a tightly gridded and narrowed spotlight strafing accross my table-top set.



For some images, I also fixed a blue gel (something like a heavy cellophane filter) over one of my lights which I bounced off the studio ceiling, to make the shadows go electric blue, while the white spotlight kept the bright parts of the picture looking more or less natural in hue.



For yet other pictures, I went for a softer, less dramatic look -- no spotlight. Instead, two studio strobes bounced off the white ceiling, plus a softbox from the back to give a little directionality and depth to the textures of the paper, the raised engraving, and the fine printing.


For my backgrounds, I used a variety of things: painted muslin backdrops, white foamcore, and a collection of different colored, woven table placemats that I buy for this purpose at places like Linens-n-Things.

Doing this table-top, still life, product photography is the opposite of many of my other shoots -- no models, no assistants, no stylists . . . just me and my lights in my studio plus some of my 11,000 plus MP3s on the sound system.