The apartment that we moved into last December is small. Since we lived in a house for 30 years prior to the move, living in an apartment has been an adjustment. It’s had its challenges that are less than optimal (two of us using the bathroom at the same time is not the best experience), but it also has provided some good challenges to me.
One of these challenges involves photography. I mentioned in an earlier post that I joined an online photo group called 52Frames.com. They have weekly themes that are designed to get the creative juices flowing. Some of the ideas I’ve had for photos need a studio set up, and guess what I don’t have?
When you think of a studio you may think of a big open space with strobes, backgrounds, umbrellas, soft boxes, costumes, props, whites walls and a giant window letting in natural light. That’s my ideal space.
Because I don’t have a studio, I have to jury rig one in our small kitchen. And this is the challenge. I have my camera and lenses, a tripod, a black fleece vest that I use as a background, a flash, and whatever other items I can scrounge up around the house that might be helpful.
The theme last week was “Fluid.” So I built a setup that would let me create an image of water flowing into a spoon in a solid stream, and then flowing out of it like water coming down a waterfall.
I wanted to shoot my flash from the side, but I didn’t have a remote. And using the flash in front would have resulted in a crappy image. So I took down the motion-sensing, battery-operated light from our bathroom and used it as a side light. And it worked.
I spent most of my time setting up the shot. More than an hour. This was difficult because I had to tape a spoon to a Gorilla tripod, and then get it to the right height so it would stick up over the sink. Then I had to figure how to get the best steam of water coming down onto the spoon with less spray and more flow.
After all this time building the studio setup, the next task was purely technical. Taking images with varying apertures and shutter speeds to manage depth of field.
After another 30 minutes or so of shooting I wrapped it up and took it to the computer and Lightroom.
The image at the top is the resulting picture. Perfect? Nope. Fun to create? Yup. Below are a couple of pics of my setup.
