The WordPress Daily Prompt provides the theme of Profuse, which gave me an immediate thought.
One of the things that I have always enjoyed doing in my photography is the solving of tricky lighting riddles, which is something that I tackled in this situation.
I wanted to photograph these paperclips in a way that gave them a bit more drama and, maybe even a bit of mystery. To achieve this effect, I looked to provide stark shadows, which meant to keep the light at a very low angle of incidence and ensuring that the background stayed very black, as seen here…
Shooting a black background is a bit tricky, as any light that falls on it has the tendency to show up gray. For this shoot I used a single flash and cinefoil to control the light (and shadow). Cinefoil is akin to a heavy aluminum foil, but a matte black rather than shiny. In order to make the paperclips large, I used a macro lens with an extension tube, so that I could pull the focal plane in a little closer.
It was fun to create this shot, and even more fun, after I printed it as a 16″x20″ format print; it’s cool to see paperclips becoming large!
Have a wonderful day!
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