Tag: product

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!