When I first started looking at photography as a serious hobby I started reading some online forums regarding lighting set ups and composition etc - the bare bones of moving from snap shot towards something more creative. One of the tools I used was a mini studio which comprised of a box with opaque windows. This allowed me to place the subject in the box and have external lights diffused through the opaque sheets.
This was my first attempt and I was absolutely amazed at the improvement I could see from previous still life attempts I had made. Now I look at this and think the image is a little lacking in 'pop' (probably due to the muted colours and/or brightness levels) and also.... my lens was dirty!!
Following this attempt I ran out to Walmart and picked up as many varieties of coloured construction paper as they had. This next image contains the 'pop' that the first one lacked... but more interesting for me was the use of 'empty space' to make the composition more interesting. When I finished the processing on this shot (resizing and brightness/contrast) it reminded me of a poster for a tropical island getaway. Another positive move for my creativity and a real bolster for my confidence!
The next experiment for me to try was to play with the positioning of my lighting. At this point I had resisted the urge to buy a flash-trigger system and I opted for the cheaper option of halogen work lights. This allowed me to alter the angle of light entering the mini-studio and as a result I learned something about shadows. In the first example of this I really liked the lighting on the rose head, but was a little disappointed by the shadowing in front of the bloom. Quite an easy fix in photoshop, but I decided to leave the image as it was so that I could use it for reference later.
In the case of the yellow roses, I was reasonably happy with the shot - but for the shadow on the right under the leaves. However, if I were taking this picture now I would have probably removed some of those leaves rather than adjusting the lighting. This would have placed more focus on the blooms.
I had seen some macro shots of leaves and stamen and decided that I would like to try it myself. I picked a red tulip and a white lily and played around with the lighting to achieve the look I wanted. Initially I thought I would want the light directed into the flower itself, but I found that this blew out the detail by providing too much brightness. So for the next two shots I lit the flowers from behind and got rid of the shadows by using a smaller light directed into the flower.
These two shots received some very positive feedback from the online forum and I really began to feel that I had started to move in the right direction with my photography.
This second picture was an attempt to play with some depth of field. It was very difficult using a low f-stop to blur the background vines while maintaining a reasonable light level so that the details of the closest vines did not become super-saturated with light.
And finally we stepped into the cool, dark cellars to see the continuing wine-making process. There was a very warm feeling to the place despite the lack of light - something to do with the rich wood colours from the barrels. Using a low f-stop and cranking up the ISO allowed me to capture these rich colours, but the clarity of the pictures suffered and the resulting images were grainy.
