Monthly Archives: June 2013

First tomatoes of the year: a lighting comparison

Biology, California, Food, Photography, , ,

Michelle and I tend our backyard garden every summer, and one of our joys is seeing the first produce of the year slowly ripen on the plants. Just this week our first cherry tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) are finally ripening, and so yesterday I took a few pictures of the glorious first fruits:

The first fruit of the year in our garden: two deliciously orange cherry tomatoes still "on the vine" (attached to the plant). This plant is a "sun sugar" variety of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) that we purchased from Orange Coast College's ornamental horticulture department. This picture was taken in the field using natural lighting to create an in-vivo look. (Marc C. Perkins)
Two ripe Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes still attached to the plant, photographed using natural light only.

The tomatoes were in some nice diffusely-lit shade, and that’s what you see above – I used a tripod to stabilize the camera, but otherwise didn’t need anything else.

But since I’ve been having fun experimenting with off camera lighting recently, I decided to pull out my lighting gear and try some “studio” style lighting on the fruits.

The first fruit of the year in our garden: two deliciously orange cherry tomatoes still "on the vine" (attached to the plant). This plant is a "sun sugar" variety of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) that we purchased from Orange Coast College's ornamental horticulture department. This picture was taken in the field using studio lighting (off camera flashes) to create a more dramatic look. (Marc C. Perkins)
The same two ripe Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes, photographed using “studio” lighting.

Those are the exact same fruits in the exact same position, but now they’ve been lit using the “invisible black background” technique I’ve described before1.

What a difference lighting makes! The black background makes the fruits pop out visually, thanks to less visual clutter, but I think it also makes the scene look more artificial (or as though it was taken at night). My favorite comment so far comes from my dad, who said that the fruit look like two “hot Jupiters”. Little tomato planets floating in space; I like it.

Footnotes

1 Two snooted flashes were setup, one on either side of the fruit, and I used my gray card to shade the background from the primary flash’s illumination. Both flashes also had great natural gobos: the branches of the plant itself.
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More pictures

To see more of my plant-related pictures, head to my Botany and Mycology gallery collection.

Chainmail: Behind the scenes of getting a perfect black background

Behind the scenes, Crafts, Photography, Tutorial, ,

As I’ve posted before, Michelle loves to make chainmail. So, it wasn’t a surprise when she recently asked me to take a picture of her latest project1:

A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.
A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.

For the purposes of this post, note the background: it’s seamlessly black, with nothing at all visible. And that background was created with no work at all in Photoshop (other than removing a string I used to support the project) – it was created solely by careful placement of off-camera lights. As the method is pretty neat, I thought I’d show you how I did it.

The first technique most people think of for getting a black background is to, well, put something black behind the object. While this works, it requires careful lighting and spacing to ensure that the black object doesn’t become visible (as more than just solid black) in the image. I did just this outdoors with my amaryllis flower bud images, but I had to find flower buds with enough shaded space behind them to hang a black T-shirt on a spare chair well behind the depth of field of the image, and then whenever stray light hit the T-shirt you could see the folds in the fabric. Annoying.

For the maille bracelet I created a black background by putting absolutely nothing behind the maille. And I mean literally nothing: here’s what the maille looked like as I was setting it up:

A picture of the copper european 8-in-1 maille project seen in natural room lighting in my "studio". The background has a colorful picture, lights, and other junk in it, which disappear thanks to the off-camera flashes which create an "invisible" black backdrop. (Marc C. Perkins)
The bracelet seen in natural room lighting in my "studio"; the metal rod on the right is the stand the bracelet is hanging from.

That is the exact positioning used for the final image you saw earlier, and yes, that is my living room wall 10′ behind the project. And a brightly colored lithograph. And IKEA lamps.
Continue reading Chainmail: Behind the scenes of getting a perfect black background →

Chainmail projects: three pairs of earrings and two bracelets

Crafts, Photography,

Michelle’s been busy lately working on maille projects (and I’ve been slow on posting pictures of them – the last one I posted was her dragonscale bracelet), so here’s a post with some of her latest work.

A chainmail bracelet made by Michelle in a Japanese 12-in-2 pattern from 18 gauge 1/4" black and white anodized aluminum rings with 20 gauge 1/8" bright aluminum rings as connectors. Taken on a concrete floor for a rugged background. (Marc C. Perkins)
A a white and black Japanese 12-in-2 bracelet.

This zebra striped bracelet is made out of black and white anodized aluminum rings (18 gauge 1/4″ diameter) held together by bright aluminum rings (20 gauge 1/8″ diameter) in a Japanese 12-in-2 pattern.

A pair of chainmail earrings made from anodized 20 gauge 1/8" niobium rings with a few bright aluminum rings woven in a byzantine pattern. Made by Michelle. (Marc C. Perkins)
Byzantine earrings made from anodized niobium.

These colorful earrings are made from anodized niobium and bright aluminum rings (20 gauge 1/8" diameter) woven in a Byzantine pattern.

A pair of chainmail earrings made from blue anodized 18 gauge aluminum rings and 19 gauge 5/32" bright aluminum rings woven in a dragonscale pattern. Made by Michelle. (Marc C. Perkins)
Blue and silver aluminum dragonscale earrings.

These are made from blue anodized aluminum rings (18 gauge 1/4") and bright aluminum rings (19 gauge 5/32") woven in a dragonscale pattern.

A pair of chainmail earrings made from anodized 20 gauge 1/8" bright aluminum rings woven in a byzantine pattern. Made by Michelle. (Marc C. Perkins)
Shiny Byzantine earrings.

Another pair of earrings made in a Byzantine weave, this time using all bright aluminum rings (20 gauge 1/8").

A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.
A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.

This bracelet is made out of copper rings (20-gauge, 3/16″ diameter) woven together in a European 8-in-1 pattern; I’ve got a separate “behind the scenes” post detailing how I created the all-black background for this picture.

More pictures

To see more pictures of maille, head to my Chain mail – finished projects gallery.