For a while I have been wanting to do some studio setups that play with elements; water, fire, earth, air. An opportunity to play with fire came up and this is the results of that photo shoot. As you can see it is pretty impressive but when I describe the behind the scene setup you will be amazed at how simple this setup really is. It is so simple, in fact, that the image at right was all done in-camera. While the watch looks like it is on fire, the flames actually sit a few inches behind the watch. No watches were injured in the making of this tutorial.

I recently went on a trip to Mystic Seaport with Pat Cook's group, Beyond the Photo with HDR*. It was a great day for shooting and capturing images for HDR. Of course there were plenty of opportunities for all kinds of photography and this portrait op landed in my lap. I just had to take it. After posting this photo of Mystic Seaport employee, Sam, to the group I was asked by another member regarding the settings used to get this particular look. I thought I'd share and elaborate on my response.

My New Year's resolution is to get my portfolio organized and filled out more with the kind of work I want to do. I have been procrastinating enough and it's high time I got serious with my work. My goal for 2013 is to actively pursue clients to increase my workflow. To that end I have been setting up some product and food shots in my studio in order to create content for my portfolio. This cutting board is one I just finished shooting so I thought I would share the setup with you.

I have been slowly building up a collection of medicine bottles for a series of medical stock photo shoots. Looking for props is both challenging and fun. Specially props that have to look like prescription pills but without a brand  look. Fortunately there are plenty of supplements and generic brands out there to keep me supplied. I also wanted to play around with a new DIY shooting table I built a couple of weeks ago, my shooting table 2.0. My first attempt is rather shaky and flimsy but I was working with what I could readily find. Sometimes you have to spend some coin to make a good product, even if it's a do-it-yourself project. But that's for another post. Lastly, I wanted to play around with some LED continuous lights. I had picked up a few different sizes and strengths to play around with some of my jewelry shots (LED's have a way of making gems sparkle) so I figured since I had them... Well, here is the result of my efforts.

In the last article we talked about using an existing product used for one purpose and modifying it for another. In this case, a skin cleaning machine is repurposed as a glass and metal cleaning buffer. In that post I introduced the product with the image shown at right. In this post we will go behind the scenes in how I created it.