Saturday, November 10, 2012

Photographing a reflective item.

Finding every day items and creating an interesting photo is always a challenge.  I had been thinking about how I can work with our can opener as a subject for a while now.  So tonight I decided it was it's time to be the subject for the Photo of the Day.  I took it out of the drawer and looked at it under a variety of light sources around the house. 

Now one of the challenges in photographing highly reflective items is that you have to pay attention to every item in the reflection. A common way to light such objects is to use a softbox and create a large, bright reflection.  However I didn't like this look to much with the can opener as it became to flat and lost a lot of detail.  I decided on a smaller, more pin point light source, in this case the overhead light in our front entrance.  I made this choice as I also wanted to use the stairs to give an interesting background.

As I lined up the shot I paid close attention to what I could see in the stainless steel.  Sometimes I could see the reflection of the iPhone which caused to things I did not want.  One was the apple logo and other times I could see the black of the phone itself which I did not like.  Once I eliminated this I then watch for the lights and again carefully moved the angles around till the highlight was only on the cutting wheel. I did have to snap a few shots as it was a little tricky but I got the shot I was looking for.

I then brought the file in to Snapseed where I cropped it for Instagram's square format.  I then applied the drama 2 filter and added the frame for this final result and my Photo of the Day.
After doing this I felt it was time to record my progress with the Movember challenge.  So I went into the studio and used the iPhone to make this self-portrait.  I took a couple of takes but I liked the way I looked in this one.  So far it is going well and other then an odd time when it starts to itch I am happy with my progress.  The one thing I noticed is that I will probably have a fair amount of grey in my beard as it grows.  If you are interested in supporting me and making a donation please visit my Movember site at http://mobro.co/patricksk

1 comment:

  1. You should have a real "soupstrainer" by the time you present at Thornhill. I will be there.

    Murray

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