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Shoot: Light Tent - Creative Backdrops

Lesson 12 from: Tabletop Photography Fundamentals

Andrew Scrivani

Shoot: Light Tent - Creative Backdrops

Lesson 12 from: Tabletop Photography Fundamentals

Andrew Scrivani

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Lesson Info

12. Shoot: Light Tent - Creative Backdrops

Lesson Info

Shoot: Light Tent - Creative Backdrops

All right but I think this is way more I don't know that rustic is the right word but it's definitely needs something right it definitely needs a little bit of something we got all these really neat little things here that we can kind of use to give it a little bit more environment might be too small wei have really cool stuff here maybe yeah let's try this so we can put this in here and try to run it up the side to make a little bit of a sweep out of it you wanna help me? You can go in that side right? Okay like a puppet you got some right there. Thanks. Andrew, do you ever use the tent for shooting sameer food work? I don't necessarily think I would because my work in particular is I try to keep it moody and this would kind of eliminate that from on my environment I'm comfortable in his pretty controlled. So I kind of like the way I work have, you know, an established style that I'm comfortable in. And I think that having a comfort zone as an artist is really important teo to be able...

to replicate what you do on a regular basis and finding a workflow that works for you um this isn't something that I've used and that in that type of work I don't know that it would do anything to enhance my work so maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know that it's something I'm that anxious to do ok let's see if this burlap give us anything it definitely had something it just needs a little tweaking that dent in the front here see, like I don't mind it having a little bit of a wave to it but that up there kind of looks funny to me so I would I would try to adjust that what we need one more piece. I think one more piece of tape would probably do the trick. Thanks. When you work in a studio every day you find that you go home at night and you have gaffer's tape stuck to like half of your clothing that happens to me on a regular basis tried again still there but its better I think I think that what's happening with this in particular is there the burlap is knocking the light down considerably so I may make an adjustment here so let me take a small bracketing adjustment and go from apertura eighteen to aperture sixteen and I'll try fourteen and we'll see what kind of difference we get. Um let me do one last little tweak in here too. Okay? I'm sorry, everyone that I am indisposed on sweating his warm it's a very good look okay, that helped a little bit this might actually even benefit a little bit from I could see what the problem is you see how that's coming up here like this that's that's knocking the light down considerably on that side so if I kind of rolled this under that might help me but it's important to note because you find that every little thing that obstructs you alight will have some type of oven effect on your final product okay and if I pull this a little tighter and real and lay it out a little flatter and maybe do what we said go down another third um we might get a little bit of a better result and then I have one last thing to try I think that worked actually it's a little too bright let's say maybe yeah it's a little bit too bright so I go back to the sixteen and take one more shot and that's good let's see yeah for straight out of the camera shot that has a lot of potential it's very I think there's very minor amounts of work that could be done on that to make it look nice where a little bright on this monitor for the for you guys in here um but it's um I think that it looks like pretty much in the camera it looked pretty good so let's try something else here oops forgot about that okay, they're a little dusty in there right now so I want to do something with I'm going toe I'm going to repurpose these little pins that we have that we use there and I'm gonna use this this really cool piece of corkboard and we're going to display some more jewelry on it we have some really nice stuff here from this is not gonna work that this will though uh visit again from pretty fun designs on we can use these little pins which also a kind of meet design element on this to display stuff it gives us some texture it kind of makes the gold in the earing stand out a little bit and um may bring a little something to this a little bit of ah uh yeah yeah so standing up and zoom right in on it I would say that my settings are probably not going to change much because I just introduced one brown item for another it might not down just enoughto okay let's see, this is where my lens coming into inside this thing with the lens flare I could see the flare in my eyes so this thing is essential in when we're inside that thing that's cool it is in an earthy feeling it gives it a nice balanced lighting feeling for jewelry especially things that are bright and shiny and reflective it's nice and kind of matt and it gives it a nice look because these hearings aren't meant to be very shiny and they are matt so I'm going to go and take a little bit more aperture here and go to eighteen so I cannot tone that down just a little bit and that kind of almost that looks daylight for me that I mean that seems very close to a daylight balance and it looks very earthy and natural and I like the idea of the hanging on those little black studs I mean I think it gives a really interesting uh feel and now conceptually we can cook we can continue in this vein using the same objects but maybe adding one more design element taking these off the corkboard using the corporate as ah surface and using something like this which is normally used to display rings but you do use your hands to put your earrings on so it isn't completely out of the realm of reasonable to think we can display these this way and be a little bit more creative about it and use both something traditional in jewelry display and something nontraditional at the same time so bye so I'm gonna do a close up okay? We'll try fire open as I can so again we're adding one more element to the idea and creating something that's kind of interesting I don't mind it at all I mean I think I don't know that it gives us the same um I don't think it gives us the same thing that the other one did as far as doing the jewelry justice but maybe if I got a little closer instead of trying to pull back and is using, yeah, you want to stick it in there, okay? Yeah, okay, just gonna zoom in on one of them. We pushed a little bit more light at it, maybe if we rotated a bit because we have sort of a dark feeling in that part that's rolling into the back, but if we rotate it a little bit to pick up the light a little bit differently, we using this white card to kind of push back or maybe I should just kind of dropped this on and shoot through the flat, you know, the other one was better than the other one is the problem with doing that is going to be that I'm going to be either too far away from one or the other in that in that scenario where I'm not going to be able to give enough detail, you also have to remember how this stuff will be displayed on the internet in a very small space, so you want to try to get it close as you can on give as much detail as possible now I'll do it because I'm I'm curious, maybe I'm misreading that and I'm willing tto give it a world here, but I don't know if I can catch the right angle what? What? I think the main problem is is that hand is really black, and I don't think that it's doing the golden, any justice at all so it's an interesting way to approach it. But let's, um, let's, let's, remove that from the equation and just put these down on some black felt and see what that looks like. As opposed to that particular matte black hand. Um, we have, I think piece out here, just a simple jury despite piece. So this is kind of like a standard, uh, jewelry display felt and we can put these down and take a look at them. So hey, jim, how you doing? We're good over here on the internet. You have any questions? You know, we always got questions. So, you know, great white north wanted to know a little bit of a technical question. Wanted to know which sitting your uses for the flashes are yu ti tl manual and on what power manual and half power. Each quote our full quarter quarter quarter, half half quarter manual. Great. Okay. And when we're from di williamson, would you ever add color gels to your work? You know, it's interesting that you said that because I don't do it personally because I like to make my career first of all like to get this close I can in camera and with lighting I'm using and then the other thing is I can usually correct the light temperature in post production so it's not something that a lot of us are doing anymore with that it's it's just it's not the technology has gotten to the point where it's not as necessary to correct color with gels we live too cool thing to do though we love raw love raw files absolutely love raw files so let's try this now in a more traditional setting and see what it does for us now see that you see I think that one will you stop introducing kind of the idea of concept into it I think it gets flat and boring thes air really dynamic looking pieces of jewellery I thought there was actually a couple that worked okay with this the best ones I think were hanging on the cork because it gave texture it give context it was it was very flattering to the goal the brown so I think we had the shot first off but like whatever I said we have the shot already now play around a little bit and see what we can get so well where were we here we are okay but we do. There is a application here for these type of forms when you wantto display jewelry I want to give it a shot I do I want to try it and see if we can make it work first of all these things can't be dusty because if they are they're going to create a problem this is a really nice piece and it's really tiny I think that doing a super macro shot against white we could take that out of there thanks. Doing a super macro shot against this black might be okay it might work nice this is too big is a smaller one their right of of this uh yeah that'll work thank you. This is a little left dusty which is always helpful so this looks like a little um compass on sort of a uh like a pewter kind of chain and it might look really nice on this black if we get close especially if we get a nice light on it handwrite say that this jewelry is pretty fun to photograph wind you yeah because it's pretty pretty fun we've pushed it back in and they catch more light to muscle later okay? Yeah all right good let's zip that up too because I think we're bleeding a little bit here so it's important to kind of try toe be mindful to close this stuff up because if light leaks through it may create highlights and things that you don't want so it's good to be a cz buttoned up as possible okay now I'm in here again, so I'm gonna try to do it that way pretty fun, okay? Let's see what we got so that's kind of cool I think I'd like to be even closer. I want to really, really see the dial of that. So I'm gonna have to stick my whole head in here, see what happens come out glowing you know, I don't think it's sitting properly and honestly, if I had my longer lens in this situation, which I do, I have it back at my studio is a seventy two two hundred millimeter lens might be a perfect opportunity to use this is to get all the way back here and zoom all the way in on it so that might be big, but right now my hundred matt, my hundred macro will do the job and let's say so here comes nice close up and I don't know what everything on that dia looks like it's speckled to me so it's let's, take a look at that up close and see if we have dusted off for if that's some kind of highlight that's happening, it doesn't look to me like it's on the glass itself it is a little smudgy, so maybe we can I have ah, I have a lens cleaner, it's a little smudgy we'll try it again

Class Materials

bonus material

Tabletop Photography Lighting Plots.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Pat O'Reilly
 

One of the the best courses from Andrew. He is my hero in all of his photography work. He is a natural. I love how he engages with the students online and in the live studio audience too. He knows his stuff. He is a great teacher with a great way of teaching - very real and authentic. With all of that experience -he has been great in imparting that knowledge to us and I’m forever grateful for that. Thank you very much Andrew and team.

a Creativelive Student
 

I was pleased to see real life situations and set ups, their work arounds and the little fiddly things all commercial/product photographers go through to produce a viable shot. Unlike some of the other reviews, the "oops, it didn't work, let's try this instead" was totally real world and believable. So many times on other teaching venues, the shot is already set up and perfected before the instruction begins. It was extremely helpful to watch the processes that were involved in producing the correct captures. I was impressed with the humor and teaching style as well, especially for the time constraints in a classroom setting. The student set-ups and critiques were valuable and spot on without being negative in any way. All-in-all this was one of the best classes I've viewed at Creative Live. I just wish I could have had three more days and to have been there in person for the one-on-one instruction.

Ernst
 

Thank you Andrew. Great class. Learned a lot. Great instructor. Only wish there were more segments using flash rather than the very expensive gear. But, the principles are the same.

Student Work

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