WBL: Shoot for Contemporary Craft student at PCA

WBL: Shoot for Contemporary Craft student at PCA
22nd April 2013
The Cove Studio


Today I was in the Cove Studio at college photographing a contemporary craft students' work that they are entering into the 2013 Pewter competition. The client wanted images that showed of her final design (pewter hair clips) in alternative ways of styling it in the hair and she also wanted the lighting to be dark, contrast shadows to represent a Gothic aesthetic and most importantly to reflect the piece. I began the shoot experimenting with different lighting setups this began with using a main light situated on the right side of the subject, a snoot as hair light and a light with soft box on the left side of the subject, to tone down the shadows slightly and bring light back into the image. However the client and me both agreed that we found that the images were to much of a 'catalogue style' and she wanted the background a lot darker with more tone. This is when I experimented more with the light firstly taking away the light with soft box from the left side, but we saw that the white/grey background was still dominant. I decided to remove the main light and only use the hair light snoot from above the subject and this completely transformed the outcomes of the images - the background became darker, the lighting had a lot more definition and shadows within the frame and the client loved this approach and wanted to stick with this setup - I did however suggest that we add a white to bounce light back into left side to avoid blocked in shadows which she thought was appropriate. Overall the shoot went smoothly, didn't struggle technically and produce some successful images that the client is really happy with. I have given her the original images in TIFF format and a few edited images that were really strong again in TIFF and she said she would let me know if she wanted any edited in particular but wanted the originals for research and development.

Kit used:

Studio lights
Sky Port
Soft Box
Snoot
Nikon D800E
24-70mm lens
Reflector - White


Images with first lighting set up: (Main light, snoot, and light with soft box)

A few final outcomes:

All Images:

Katie Minchin Photography - All Rights Reserved