Cactus Lotion

Couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to shoot tonight, but then I saw a cactus and some lotion. So naturally I grabbed them and make a fake ad with it. Well, kinda a fake ad. More of a interesting weird photo.

The first challenge was to find a spot to put the bottle of lotion in the cactus. This was solved pretty easily though, as there were only a few spots where the bottle would balance, and only one I wanted to try!

Next deal was lighting, I stuck a flash behind a below the cactus, and one in a soft box up high to the right. Here's a picture of the set up.

The backlight was at 1/16 power I think, and the front was at 1/32 maybe? I was shooting at f4.5, 1/200, and ISO100. The goal of all that was to light just the cactus, and not the background. But of course that didn't happen because light always finds a way to go places it shouldn't! But that's okay.

Btw, I have the soft box off to the side like that so that the specular highlight on the bottle isn't over the logo.

Once I got the shot (after about 30 different angles and what not) I went over to Lr. At first, I liked it as a color image, but after a little while I went with b/w because I really love how it highlights textures and form rather than color. My adjustments were

EV +
Highlights +
Shadows -
Whites +
Blacks -



Then I made a large vignette, and did some local adjustments. There were some light spots by the pot that I just dropped the exposure on a ton to get rid of, and then I raised the brightness on the bottle and that area.

Not exactly what I was looking for, but pretty close. I love the juxtaposition of the lotion with the cactus.

See you tomorrow!