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2011-12-24 at 15-48-57 still life white vase light shadow bone waves2.jpg

When Light Curves

February 6, 2012

Playing with light on a beautiful white vase. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 30mm f/8 1/250 ISO 100

The curve and line of the thing pulls my hand to it.  Every time I see it I want to touch it.  I is light and cool with a milky form that invites inspection and exploration.  Even all on it's own, just sitting there on the table it seems to absorb the light in the way that a white thing should not.  It is a beautifully made thing.

One afternoon during Christmas vacation I decided to pull out my lights and photography this vase.  My wife buys vases, alot of vases but this one in particular I really like.  The shape and texture of the thing where made to have light playing against it.  I set up on a tripod in front of the kitchen table and draped some black fabric over a chair that I had put on top of the table.  This was my very "high tech" studio.  I started by setting an exposure that would completely kill the ambient light, (my first frames where completely black), then I started layering in light.  For this image I used 2 flashes that where mounted off camera and triggered by Cactus V4 strobes, (very inexpensive and very reliable with fresh batteries).  The camera left flash was set at 1/32 power and mounted on a light stand and had a small, 6"x4", light box velcroed to it.  I wanted the light to be softer coming from the left but I didn't want the full wrap around that an umbrella would provide.  I really wanted the camera right side of the vase to be brightly lit and yet to maintain an area of shadow to emphasize the three- dimensionality and shape of the vase.  I put a homemade cardboard snoot ala David Hobby on my second flash and held it at extreme camera right with very low power, 1/64 or 1/128.  It turned out that I needed a pretty extreme angle to get the effect I was looking for.  The snooted flash is behind the vase pointing back at the camera at a slight angle so that the flash head is visible in the uncropped frame.  I knew I wanted a square composition so the flash was going to get cropped out anyway.  It was very cool to be able to paint the light the way I wanted it to look.

-Russell Berg

Below is another shot that I took without the snooted flash at camera right.  I like this one too especially the way that the left edge of the vase is well defined and the right edge falls away into shadow.

2011-12-24 at 15-43-04 still life white vase light shadow bone waves.jpg
In Still Life Tags Bone, White, Shadow, Waves, Vase, Light, Still Life
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We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.

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