Beer

Long exposures are usually pretty fun and this one didn't let down. The real trick here was getting the set to stay completely black for the whole 8 second exposure. We turned off all the lights in the studio and wore black gloves and long sleeves while moving the flash light around behind the bottle.

I also wanted to make sure and get some nice color out of the bottle. For this, I used one of those cheap glow sticks from Target. As it turns out, it was just the color I was looking for.

Seeds of Change

One fun thing about having family members spread all across the country is getting all the boxes of goodies during the holidays. Given how random some of the gifts are, I can usually count on getting something will act as a new prop. This year, it was chocolate covered sunflower seeds.

Death of Incandescent Bulbs

I recently read an article on Feature Shoot about Jonathon Kambouris and his series of exploding medicine and decided to explode some things of my own. I had no idea what to expect from this, I'd never hit a light bulb with a hammer before, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results.

The hardest part was getting the exposure right. I had no idea what kind of light was going to come out of the bulb once I put a hammer through it, so I did some tests of with the light on and off, and shot for a happy medium.

I was trying to go for an effect of the bulb overheating and blowing itself up. This is clearly a composite, but I think a level of mystery still exists in the final product. As long as it isn't absolutely clear where the different pieces are, the image still works as a whole.

The composite starts from the bulb in a few different states, and then it's just a matter of retouching. Here are a couple of the base images.

On a side note, light bulbs are much more durable that I thought. It took me six tries to get this one to break.

Shoes

I often look through my girlfriend's fashion magazines for inspiration. It works out well because she makes a lot of the items found in the magazines available for me to shoot.

I found this in an issue of Real Simple a few months ago. I really like their style of photography, it's, well, simple. They often take advantage of bold colors and forgo the flashy after-effects that are growing in popularity in the fashion world.

This is a simple, one-light set up with a flagged umbrella on the right side and a large white reflector on the left to help fill in the shadows. I used the flag to keep the light from going right into the table and back into the lens. You could probably do the same with a small softbox, but I was trying to get as much wrap as I could with the umbrella.