Photography on a White Foundation

 Saturday, June 2, 2012

Photography on a White Foundation 

     I must apologize to all my dedicated readers of this blog. It's hard to be motivated to write a blog when the readership is low.However, this is definitely a case of "Is the glass half full or half empty?"

Instead of looking at the blog as half-full, I was looking at it half-empty. I was not thinking about those who visited here, but those who didn't.

     So thank you all for visiting, and I'll try to motivate myself to start posting on this blog again.

    As you know, I buy and sell old toys  on E- Bay.  I then photograph the toys and write about them on my other blog oldantiquetoys.blogspot.com. I was browsing on E-Bay when I came across some simple, but excellently done toy listings. I wrote the seller a note to commend him, and he and I communicated. When he'll have time, he'll be making a guest appearance on that blog.

    His technique is to photograph all of his items on white. The toys are then easy to see, clean, and have no distractions such as what they might be resting on or the foundation. My usual method of taking toy photos is to use 2  3200 degree Kelvin spot lights made by LTM.  One creates the mood and direction of the lights and is called a main light, while the weaker one adds light to the shadows and also creates detail. The second one is called a fill light.  When using the fill light, you have to ensure that its shadow is hidden. The reason is that studio lighting is based on the sun, our light source. The sun comes from 1 direction, and casts 1 shadow. That's the reason!

                          

The above  images are how I normally photography my toys.

I like this lighting, and I also use a few silver reflectors to add those  bright areas or "highlights" on the surfaces of the toys.

With a white foundation, the shadows will not be as distinct, as the white reflects more. Also, I try and keep the intensity (exposure) of each light almost identical, so that any shadow will be cancelled out by the other.

1 other note: If you use automatic exposure, 

you may find that you're photos are underexposed for the subject.

The reason for this is that even digital cameras are still calibrated to expose for a shade of  tone called 18% grey. That's a tone of grade that when exposed properly will also expose a range of tones from white to black and in-between correctly.

So what's the solution?

Use manual exposure, look at the exposure in your viewfinder, and set the new exposure for anywhere from 1-2 f-stops wider (Larger aperture) or  2 slower shutter speeds.

A Kilgore Cast IRon 1930's car

The 8 images above are examples of how the white foundation or background works with my toys.

I did some "cleaning-up" because as you can see in the above photo, there are some "dirty spots".

Those grey areas are the result of not spreading the light out evenly. As a result those areas are underexposed, and have been exposed to yield a grey shade.

My next post or instalment will show you how to clean up those areas.

So to all of you who have helped support my writing on this blog, thank you, thank you, and thank you.

I hope I will  write lots more to have you contineu to come back to this blog.

As always, my friendly readers,  have a good morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you may be.