Product Time

This week's theme is Product Photography, which I've done a bit of before. So this time around I decided to play with reflections to see if I could do it as deliberately step-by-step as Jim Talkington.

I started off with a black-painted piece of foam board and the glass from an end table as a base, and another black foam board for a background. (These are actually white foam boards with one side painted black - dual purpose!) After finding a good reflection angle and dialing in a manual exposure, I decided to use a backlight to separate the black clock from the black background. (Originally, the shot was going to be of a silver clock, but didn't have a good reflection.)

The flash is a bare 580 EX II at 1/64 zoomed to its max 80mm and aimed towards the top of the clock to keep glare off the glass base. To fill in the front of the clock, I tried a front fill card (more white foam), but got an uneven reflection in the clock face. Moving the fill card above on an angle lit up the buttons on top nicely.

Next, I moved the flash more directly behind the clock to pick up the right side, and had to flag it off to avoid lens flare. The final step was to use another fill card to provide some separation of the right edge, which had to be far enough back not to reflect in the clock face. There's a general setup shot; I handheld the top fill card. As the time on the clock shows, it took 28 minutes from the first shot to last. Not quite David Hobby or Chase Jarvis speed, but pretty good for one flash in my dining room!

I also played a little with a nice, shiny cocktail shaker. Two front fill cards created an interesting, though incomplete pattern, and there is a nice highlight from the back flash.

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