SHOOTING STILL LIFE WITH INEXPENSIVE GEAR

SUMMER SCHOOL 2019, CLASS ONE

SUMMER SCHOOL 2019 CLASS ONE

SHOOTING STILL LIFE WITH INEXPENSIVE GEAR
Class by Barbara Sherman, Flagstaff, Arizona

 I don’t own much equipment and no studio so my images are often made by a window in the corner of my bedroom using white and black boards, pieces of reflective paper and anything I can put together for a background and sometimes a single speedlite.

I first set up my background board in front of the window so light was coming over the top and around the sides.(It’s an old fence section cut down to a small size and rubbed with chalk).

For this photo, I wanted to have “sparkly” water while lighting the fruit so added a speedlite bouncing off a white wall and back through a diffuser to the left side. A piece of black construction paper was clamped onto the diffuser to flag the light on the left side of the glass so the highlight would be the size I liked. To add some contrast and eliminate reflections on the right side of the glass, I placed a small black card on the right side of the water jug. Notice the jar is sitting on a large beer mug turned upside down so the spigot is at the right height  …Staying cheap here!

I shoot alone most of the time and have found a wireless remote set to a 3-second delay works great. Get in position, hit the remote count to 2 ½, start the action, move your hand quickly out of the way…..REPEAT.

Homemade backgrounds, limited equipment, found space and your imagination and you can shoot anything.

“Here is a photographer that is infinitely patient, and interested in the stubborn core of things. Her images are captured in single exposures of up to half an hour, then painstakingly printed in her darkroom on large format, silver gelatin paper. The methodology is unapologetically old-fashioned, and the results extraordinary powerful.”

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