Luca Ferroglio Photos: Some sort of home studio photos

I was at home, some days ago, in the afternoon, and I was getting a bit bored, so... I took my camera, looked around me and wondered what I could do.

The answer comes quite easily: I have my new iPhone 3Gs, I have some apples, and I've just seen an inspiring photo on flickr. So, here we go!

First thing, I need some white background. Unfortunately, I don't have any large white cloth or anything similar, thus.. it's a hard task to start like this. No problem, I say to myself: some white papers will do a good job, surely. It's certainly not as a soft box, but that's not that bad either!

So, here we go: white papers on the table, overlapping each other, an apple, my iPhone, and a bit of light.

I set up my beloved Canon 580EX II on the stand, white umbrella opened, and I start playing around. Also, I think a bit of filling light might be worth, so I also open my gold reflector, and place my camera on the tripod, remote control in hands, and curtains down, so that the only light really comes from my source only.

I start shooting changing compositions, but what I get is not really what I'm looking for. The reason is quite simple: the apple is nice, the iPhone itself is nice, but... The screen of the iPhone is off, and it looks really sad!

So, here comes the idea: iPhone screen on, longer exposure time.

The iPhone screen, even if at full brightness, still is not bright enough compared to the strong light of the strobe. If, as I was doing, I shoot at 1/200, f/5.6, the screen just looks too dark.

So, easy solution, I rise the exposure time up to 1/4. This way, still the only light I have is the one from my strobe, since the room is otherwise almost completely dark. The rather long time exposure, on the other hand, permits the screen of the iPhone to be bright enough to appear.

Also: I want the main subject of the photo to be the apple, not the iPhone itself. The iPhone has to be there only to give a meaning to the apple; this is the reason for a rather short depth of field given by the f/5.6 aperture, which leaves the iPhone blurred, while the apple appears perfectly on focus.

The final effect is: the bright and colourful screen of the iPhone catch your attention at first, but since it is blurred, your attention is driven away. You start following the earphones, which, by making a loop around the apple, finally concentrate your attention on the fruit itself.

I like the final effect quite a lot; the strobe is camera left, while on the right I have the gold reflector for filling, which also adds a bit of warm tones.

The picture is taken with my now almost-always-on-camera 85mm f/1.8.

Still unsatisfied, I decide to try something completely new to me: smoke.

I have some incense somewhere in my house... It's one of those things I like to use sometimes, and that might eventually be useful to create a nice atmosphere in case some nice girl decides to come to my place ;)

I change the light set-up, place my strobe on camera right, with a snoot to direct the light in the direction I want, and I place my 5-in-1 reflector with the black side as a background; perfect, ready to go!

I light up the incense, switch off the lights and... well, the mood is really nice now, so let's start shooting.

The room is completely dark now, so I can hardly see the smoke coming from incense (next time I will do certainly differently). I focus on the burning part of the incence, rise the camera to keep the focus distance, at start shooting almost at random. From time to time, I blow toward the smoke, to create some turbolences, which is what gives that nice shapes to smoke pictures.

Meanwhile, my mother calls me on the phone:

It is really funny. Looking at the photos preview on my camera screen really makes me feel happy, just like a child.

Postprocessing is really funny too. Smoke pictures come essentially as gray shapes on a black screen; nothing you would scream about, probably. The nice thing comes when you invert the pictures: now you have gray smoke on white background, and if you add colours... you can get something amazing. Also, you can start playing with mirroring, overlaying, and so on...

Here's one example:

Doesn't this look like some sort of a woman portrait? I love this one. I simply mirrored the image and inverted again one of the two. Placed side by side, this is the result.

Also, I wanted to see what I could get by overlying the two mirrored images of another smoke picture:

This looks like a mermaid, doesn't it? I find this to be unbelievable: I wouldn't be able to paint, but letting the nature paint for me can be even better, if you consider this is only a matter of chance!

I also love the smoke revolutions on this one: