Technique 30
Photography News Issue 26 absolutephoto.com
The great indoors Table-toppers This month, take a voyage of photographic discovery without even leaving your own home as the PN team showcase three brilliant still-life techniques you can shoot at the kitchen table
What you’ll need
Camera A DSLR or a CSC with full manual control is vital because you’ll be experimenting with shutter speeds and apertures as well as needing to control focus precisely. These cameras will also make it easier to set the white- balance for creative colour effects and let you take a custom white-balance reading for the flash you’re using. Lenses A macro lens is very handy for still-life and vital for real close-up shots, but if you don’t have one, or if you can’t justify the outlay, you can focus closer by attaching extension tubes or reversing rings to your existing lenses. For larger subjects and wider views a standard zoom, like a 24-70mm or 18-55mm works just fine. Tripod A tripod is absolutely vital, not only in keeping the camera still during long exposures, but improving image sharpness. Shooting from a locked-off position also lets you capture multiple exposures which you can blend later in software, and of course keeps your hands free to move lights, or the subject. Lights Sadly, the flash on your camera isn’t your friend when it comes to still-life, so you need an accessory flashgun, or two, allowing you to place the light where you want in the scene. Specialised macro flashes are also desirable. And having a range of torches or LED lights on hand gives you plenty of creative options. Other stuff It’s not just ‘core’ photo gear that adds up to a great still life, small accessories help an awful lot, too. You might need ND filters to control the light, or brackets, clamps and lighting stands to position it. If you’re working with macro florals, using a clamp also helps place the subject and hold it firm.
Words & pictures by Kingsley Singleton &Will Cheung
A lot of people think of still-life as an old-fashioned, staid subject, but when you get into it, you find that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s demanding, exacting and endlessly creative. There’s just so much to think about with still-life; so many choices, that despite being something you can shoot without even setting foot outside, it’s very challenging. And of course rewarding, too. So while the weather worsens, retreat with us and keep shooting. If you haven’t already got a still-life project in mind, the place to begin is finding a subject. Look around your home and although it might not seem like a storeroom of photographic inspiration, there’s much more to shoot than you’d think. How about starting in the kitchen; there’s cutlery, produce, ceramics and glassware.
In the living room you might find flowers, ornaments, lightbulbs. Upstairs, jewellery and toys, even a collection of old lenses or cameras. Or head into the garden and grab yourself a fallen leaf... It’s all you need to start the journey. Next you need an area to shoot in, but fortunately still-life doesn’t require a lot of space. You can set up on the dining room table, or use the top of a chest of drawers as the techniques in themonth’s guide show. But you don’t want distractions while you’re working, so lay claim to a room and tell everyone that you’re not to be disturbed. Even turn your phone off, so you can get properly absorbed by what you’re shooting. Lighting and composition come next; how are you going to take the subjectandshowitoffinaninteresting
way? Again, the type of lighting you can use varies enormously. You can shoot great still-lifeswithnatural light from a window (if there are any), but torches, LEDs and flashmake it easier. In these techniques we’ve used all three, showinghoweach canbring the best from a subject. How you control and position your light source is just as important, so you’ll need to have somemodifiers on hand. Home-made versions can work wonders, as anyone who’s ever made a light-tent out of bubblewrapwill tell you, but there’s an advantage to using properly designed gear that’s been evolved with photographers in mind. Itmight be good time to invest in some new kit, which is always a brilliant excuse to play, so if you see something you like in this month’s techniques, stick it on your Christmas list.
Shoot backlit leaves
lamp behind it, but the most effective and controllable way is to use flash. With flash, the light will be more consistent and you can control the power to suit what you need. So, for example, if you want maximum depth-of-field, setting a high output will enable you to shoot at f/16. You can also use lower ISO setting for the best possible picture quality. Positioning the flash behind the leaf is relatively simple, although of course you have to suspend the subject somehow. I set the camera I was using – a Pentax K-3 with an SMC D FA 100mm f/2.8 Macro WR lens – on a Manfrotto 055MF3 tripod with a Manfrotto 468MGRC2 ball head, and roughly composed the image. Although it’s best to use a dedicated macro clamp for this type of work, I didn’t have one to hand, so I attached the leaf to a piece of coat-hanger wire with some garden twine, and bent the bottom part around to form a stand. This worked fine – once it had stopped wobbling – and, as with many macro subjects it’s highly beneficial to be able to move the subject around to tweak the composition, leaving the camera locked in position. Positioning the flash You can use any off-camera flash for this technique, and although I could have used a speedlight on a stand behind the subject, controlling it with a sync cable or wireless, I decided to try out a dedicated macro unit, the Venus Optics KX800 FlexibleMacro
It’s late autumn, so most trees will be bare so that means lots of fallen brown, yellowand red leaves to shoot up close. You could shoot on location but that means contending with wind and variable light so the indoor option has great appeal. Shooting a leafy macro or still life shot at home means you have total control and all the hours you need to experimentandtailorthesettingsand composition to get the look youwant. The first thing is to find some good specimens, so get out, search around for fallen leaves that haven’t yet turned to mush, then discard all but the brightest and least tattered ones. This is particularly important if you’re planning to shoot the edges, as that’s where most of the damage happens. For the pictures on this page, I concentrated on the veins, but was still careful to avoid leaves with too many spots and holes. Once you’ve found some good ones, put your proposed subjects in a polythene bag to retain any moisture so the leaves don’t dry out on the journey home. Setting up for backlighting I wanted to shoot my leaves with some backlighting, and the reason is simple; because leaves are translucent they glow in a lovely way when lit from the behind, just like the sun is hitting them. You can do this is a number of ways, like taping a leaf to a window pane and allowing the natural light outside to flood through it, or you can position a
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