Deconstructing "Deconstructing an Alpine Meadow" (A Behind the Scenes Look)
Last week I shared a little photographic project that came about on a rainy Mother’s Day earlier this year, and this week we'll look at how I made those images - without any fancy gear.
Stuff lying around the house.
That’s it.
No, seriously.
That’s all you need to transform flowers / plants - picked from a local field and normally wouldn’t be looked at twice - from ordinary to extraordinary.
What are those things, you may ask?
Well, I’m both proud and embarrassed to admit (proud because of resourcefulness, embarrassed because it’s so basic) what they were, actually.
They were:
Natural light (from Mother Nature).
Clothes pegs (from our laundry).
Cardboard (from old packaging I cut up).
Black paper (or plastic wall tile in my case).
You see, photography is not about fancy gear.
Although looking at the stuff going around on the line (internet), you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is about the latest (expensive) camera / lens / lighting setup / backpack.
It’s not.
Photography is about this:
Observation, understanding light, patience, did I mention observation?
Always.
This reminds me of a quote I really like:
To me, photography is the art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
- Elliot Erwitt
But I’m getting distracted, apologies, this is supposed to be about how I made the pictures for my previous post “Deconstructing an Alpine Meadow”:
What:
In this post, I already talked about how we collected the plants (from a local alpine field).
Setup:
Above you can see the setup, outside on our garden table and the materials used.
Technical Details:
I shot for 1/100 of a second at f5.6 and at ISO 1000 (handheld towards dusk, hence the high ISO, as fast a shutter speed as possible, and an aperture to gain as much depth of field under the circumstances to still balance out the exposure). And using a longer lens for compression / filling the frame with the subject. If you have a macro lens, great, I don’t, so I just used one of my longer lensed at 150mm.
Most of the work was done in camera, below you can see the RAW vs the Edited image. Not a big difference before / after, just some light contrast adjustments and background cleanup - all in Lightroom.
Lastly, about the light:
Avoid direct sunlight, you want to do this in the shade e.g. side of the house / indoors next to a window / or in my case: under the roof of our outside terrace.
This will give you soft, omnidirectional light that wraps around the subject, avoiding deep harsh shadows. If needed you could use a white paper / cardboard on the opposite side of the subject (from the indirect light direction) to fill in some shadows, but it wasn’t needed in my case.
As I mentioned last week:
I wish I could say this was a highly professional, technically challenging and sophisticated photoshoot that required an entire studio team.
But it wasn’t.
Instead, it was an amazing reminder about how much photography is about yes, observation as mentioned, but also about resourcefulness - and about having fun!
Do you have any images that were made in a simple way, but turned out great / you were stoked with?
Simply hit reply and let me know / comment below.
PS - You’ll notice I didn’t mention the specific camera I used. That is because I am planning a future post specifically about it - stay tuned!
PPS - And no, it is faaaaaaar from fancy. In fact, it is one of the cheapest things you can pick up these days - don’t tell anyone ;-)
—
Until next time ✌🏽.
Cornelius
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