I recently had some down time and decided to fire up the camera and flashes and throw together a quick DIY home studio.
So what was involved? First we needed a surface, in this case the dining room table. Then, since we don't run a regular studio, we needed a quick backdrop. An old roll of drafting paper (paper vellum in this case) will do just fine. A bit of scotch tape to hold things in place.
Then some gear. A camera, two flashes (a Canon and a Yongnuo), light stands, an umbrella, flash triggers and transceiver (Phottix) and tripod.
For a subject, I decided to use a set of flowers we had received from a friend which were drying out and almost dead and a can of glossy spray paint from another project. The setup looked like this when all was said and done:
The Canon Flash was mounted on a stand with a trigger and an umbrella at a 45 degree angle above and to the left of the subject, while the Yongnuo was on a small stand and trigger placed under the edge of the paper and used to light the paper from below and behind. I didn't want it in the shot, and used it for maximum washing out of the background. Making the images really high key.
So next I needed to take a few before images to meter and get an idea of the desired exposure and overall look. Easy enough.
Then paint the flowers to get the final look I am after, which ended up something like this.
After that it was shoot time. I was able to get really high key images and keep not only some of the vibrant colors of the flowers peeking through the paint, but alsp get some really rich and wet blacks to saturate the petals. Overall a success! I wanted high contrast, blown out backgrounds and rich colors.
As soon as the Personal Projects page is back up there will be a place for this, but intil then, here is the gallery. Take a look!