Studio Photography Workshop - Introduction

Last week, I attended a two day studio photography workshop at City and Islington College which was suggested for Art of Photography students. Richard Maxted a professional photographer led the course. His web gallery of photos includes stunning graphic images of everyday objects as well as a range of commercial advertising images for major corporations: British Airways etc.

The six participants of the course were all OCA students.

The course program was as follows:

Session 1: Group session: a shiny subject

Session 2: Team session: shiny objects

Session 3: Group session: contre-jour lighting

Session 4: Group session: lighting of form

Session 5: Team session: contre-jour lighting and form

In the group sessions, Richard used a large format Linhof tilt and shift camera with a Leaf digital back shooting tethered to a laptop. He directed the team on how to set up and operate the camera, how to set up the set and control the lighting and other equipment.

In the team sessions, three students worked together to use the techniques demonstrated earlier to photograph similar subjects using Nikon D300 SLR cameras.

Session 1: Group session - crushed take-away container

Linhof large format camera with Leaf digital back tethered to laptop was already in place.

Lens had levers/rings to adjust aperture, speed, liveview, cocking lever and cable release. Exposure is manual.

Focussing is adjusted by moving the bellows forward and back by rotating and locking focussing knob. Further knobs move the front plate and back plate to the side and up and down.

Adjust all knobs to zero position before taking first photograph. Use spirit level to level the camera on the tripod.

Lens points down at 45% to table. Mains flash lamp located on gantry at 45% opposite the camera. A frame covered with tracing paper was placed below the lamp.

Richard placed standard grey card on the table, and took a photo so that the Leaf software could adjust the white balance.

Richard placed the subject on two wooden blocks on a table covered with black velvet. Tips: the subject has to be perfect physically. Any imperfections will weaken photo. Lift up on block or spike. This creates a shadow around the subject and also permits fill light from below.

The light cast hard shadows on the wrinkled surface. In order to soften this, a honeycomb was placed in the lamp holder.

Set aperture to f16 (centre of aperture range) and take picture. If overexposed reduce power of flash - not aperture or speed of lens.

Photograph of set up before subject introduced

Once light balance between highlights and shadows is OK, reduce aperture to f22 and adjust flash to compensate.

Use a reflector to fill in lighting on edges or reduce shadows. White board gives soft lighting, silver matt for medium and silver mirror board for hard lighting. Use stands to hold reflectors in place.

Zooming in on the front and back edges on the laptop screen showed that these were not sharp enough. Richard suggested using a small piece of print cut out from a magazine to check the sharpness of at the front and back of the subject. With this type of camera depth of field can be obtained by adjusting the angle of the front and back plates. According to Scheinflug Law, the depth of field is optimized if the hypothetical lines through the front and back plates intersect a horizontal line through the subject.

The surface of the subject can be modified using a spritzer of glycerine mixed with some water to produce a "water droplet" appearance. There are also matt sprays which dull the surface.

Tip: Keep lighting arrangements as simple as possible.