I picked up a pumpkin this weekend, and I had a bit of time today, so I decided it'd make a perfect photo of the day to carve it. It didn't take too long to shape it up, the hardest part was not having a good carving knife! Plus the pumpkin's a little old already, and dying out :( I hope it lasts until this weekend!
Once I had it all nice a perfect, out to the cold October night I went, with only a glowing pumpkin to light my way. Well, that and a headlamp...and strobes.
First things first, I had to figure out the correct exposure for the pumpkin it's self. The glow inside was crucial to get right. I started out just guessing at f4 and half a second, which was pretty dang close. The "correct" exposure turned out to be f4 and 1 second, so just one stop off the money.
Now I have the internal of the pumpkin all lit, the outside needed some light. Perfect for a strobe. I put the pumpkin on a black cloth to have the background less distracting, then also put a grid on the strobe to only let light on to the pumpkin. Grids constrict light. This light I put up and to the right, just out of the frame. I got it as close as possible, so that I could use a lower power, and also have a larger ratio between the pumpkin and the background.
I'll explain it this way, shine a light across the yard, and the lawn chair and table will be lit evenly. In relation to the light source, they're almost on the same plane. The distance between the two is negligible in terms of the amount of light hitting them. Now, get right up with the chair, and shine the light in the same direction. The chair will be really really lit up, and the table will be dark compared to it. This has to do with the inverse square law, which says that if you double the distance, you quarter the amount of light. It works in powers of 2.
In our first case the chair and table are say, 28 and 32 feet away. For the sake of the example, correct exposure will be at 2 ft. So at 28 ft, you lose 3.8ish stops of light, at 32ft, you lose 4. That's barely anything, most people would not notice a difference at all.
For case two, we are 1 ft away from the chair. If the chair is properly lit, then the table is 1/8 as bright. It's 4 times the distance away from the light the chair is, so it gets 8 times less light.
Back to this photo tonight, the closer I got the light to the pumpkin, the darker the background would be in relation to the pumpkin. Which I wanted.
Moving on...
The second light was in the back left zoomed in and at a very low power. This light was just to light up the fog, and to put a little specular highlight on the pumpkin. I gelled it orange, so the highlight would blend in a bit better. Fog is best lit behind, so the light is about a foot back from the plane of the fog.
For shooting this, I used a remote trigger, so I could put some fog on the scene, and also pop the camera. And then I just went crazy. Fog everything, lights flashing, more fog, running out of fog, more pictures, more fog, picture, picture, picture.
Essentially, I just got a bunch of pictures of fog in different places.
When I got them into Lr, I did some basic edits first. On the face of the pumpkin, I brightened it a bit, and softened/lightened the shadows. This just gave it a happier feeling, not as crunchy as it was before. Then for the smoke, I increased the clarity a bit to give it more crunch.
On to Ps. I first found my base layer I liked. This had the most awesome smoke in it that I could layer other smoke effect on. The other layers were set to lighten, and black layer masks were applied. This step was to ready the layers so that I could just paint in where I wanted more smoke. Which is exactly what I did. Just paint where I want more, and black where I want less. Easy as pumpkin pie.
Then in Lr again, I did a little bit of a desaturate on the smoke, to make the blending go a bit better. The colors were off for some reason, which I really don't like. I also raised the clarity and highlights on the smoke, just to make it pop more. Finally, a little vignette was added. Perfecto.
See you tomorrow!
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