Energy for the Soul... (and metabolism, of course)

My sister made these little energy ball things tonight. No idea what they are made of, but they're amazing and I want her to make more of them immediately. But she's sleeping, and you don't wake sleeping beasts  baking geniuses.

Anyway, I tried something a little different tonight for shooting. Instead of using one strobe to turn the big box into a soft box and the other as a directional key light, I shot both strobes into the box. This effectively made the box into a giannnnttt light box with two hot spots to provide a bit of directional light. I played around with light directions, but I ended up with one strobe a bit behind the balls, and one just in front. This lit the shadows a little better and also provided some good textures. The back light was angled pretty low to create the textures, while the front light was angled up to provide a bigger, softer light from above.

I generally like to have a soft light on one side, and then a hard light on the other or in the back. I just feel this can be more dramatic at times, and also strikes a nice balance between textures and super soft lighting. I can balance the two to fill in the shadow and control that balance.

For the food set up, my sister made a nice arrangement with oatmeal and the balls stacked into a pyramid. I added a bit more oatmeal as the pile was a bit small for my liking. I wanted only three objects in the scene, and if there was only a small pile of oatmeal, then the background would be separated into multiple "objects," and distract the viewer. Consistency in the background is important to me, unless its an important part of the picture.

So for the picture tonight, I'm using the second set up we did. That was a big pile of oatmeal with half an energy ball in it. This made three objects in the scene, very simple and clean. I kept a bit of plate at the bottom to add some reference, although it wasn't really needed. I chose to frame the ball right in the middle because this photo is so much about symmetry and clean lines. The ball is a circle, a regular shape, and I wanted to continue that theme. Plus, it just felt right to frame it there; 99% of the time I just go with my gut feelings when shooting. Trying to calculate stuff takes a long time and usually doesn't work out! Sometimes it's super helpful, but most of the time I just wing it and it turns out okay :)

I shot at ISO100, 92mm, f6.3, and 1/160. The aperture is a little higher to get some DoF back. I still like shallow DoF, but for this f5.6 or lower was too much.

Editing....I didn't do much.  Add some highlights and whites, then raise the shadows in the ball just a tad with a local adjustment.

Se you tomorrow!