This was fun. My first attempt at a studio still life.
The item is a kind of a bowl for candles that my wife bought a few years ago. I have always liked how they look, and how the candle shine through the semi transparent leaves, so I decide to have a go at it.
The orange light from within is just the candle. I had to use a fairly long exposure to get it right. I put up a grey cloth as a background, but it ended up all black, so I flashed my Godox AD100Pro at it. It was fun to be able to adjust the tone of the background using the flash power. Next I decided to put a flash on the item itself to lift the underside a bit. I put a flash with a softbox very close on the left side. You can see the cold light on the base, and on the leaves on the left side. I went for a very subtle effect since I wanted the candle to dominate, and I wanted to keep the reflections in the table. I spend quite some time on tuning the flash power and balancing the candle exposure using the shutter speed.
The result? I’m happy. I managed to use the flash to improve the result without being obvious. It is not merely a product shot as I think it has some mood to it.
Could I do better? No doubt, but to my untrained eyes I can’t think of much. I think I could have added another flash on the right (or a reflector) to get a tiny accent on the right hand side of the base as well, but that’s about it. Maybe I’ll see more options later.
This is a very different type of photography than I’m used to. I have never “created” an image in this way before. I have always found naturally occurring subjects. Either in nature, or objects left there by other people. To pick up an object and then building up an image from that is something completely different. And it’s fun. It is more like drawing or painting. Most of photography revolves around removing unwanted stuff, but here it is the opposite. Even light is something you add yourself.