Spring...

Today, March 21st, is the beginning of the Spring.
I admit that, looking out of the window, dark clouds and fog inspires all but nature's rebirth after the winter. This day, however, marks the rebirth of this blog, left to itself for some time, for problems related to lack of spare time. During the next month I hope having enough free time to add some article on this blog, and some photos I shot during the last months.

I'll start now with a bunch of freezing photos, shot during a Sunday morning in the just finished winter. It has been a quite cold winter, it snowed many times and the temperatures dropped for some days under -10°C. Not bad.

Let's return to the photos. I shot them in Sunday morning, to be precise on January 23rd. I decided to go out to take some photos in the area near my house, where the cold and humid air create a phenomenon that in Italian is called "galaverna". During this phenomenon small drops of mist, with temperatures below 0°C and no or light wind, solidify when they are in contact with something solid, such as the ground or vegetation. This creates small ice structures with the shape of a needle, oriented in the direction of the wind.

Now the photos!

All the pictures are taken with Nikon D40 and Nikkor 18-55, without tripod. In the third image the flash helped lighten the leafs and improve its texture, making the background bright but not completely white.

Step by step photo: iPod Mini

Some months ago I shot this photo of my iPod Mini.
I wanted an advertising-style image, one you could find in an Apple brochure. I am quite satisfied with the result, considering that the tools I used weren’t professional ones.
This is a short explanation of how I arrived at the final result.
Although it’s a good image (at least for me it is) I used a very poor setup.
For this image we need:

• An iPod Mini (or whatever you like to photograph)
• A table :)
• Camera with telephoto lens (I used my Sigma 70-200, at 160mm) for squeezing the perspective and have a more blurred background
• Tripod
• Sheet of white and smooth cardboard, about 50x70 cm (about 20x28 in). This will be our background and cover the table.
• Some sheets of printer paper
• A light source (I used a table lamp, with a 40W light bulb)

We start positioning the white cardboard on the table and bending it gently to create the background. It doesn’t need to make a sharp bend, otherwise the border will appear in the final image, and will be very difficult to remove.

Turn on the table light (allo ther lights must be turned off,or some blue reflecions could appear on the image) and measure the White Balance. This will help us in the editing of the image.
Position the object in a pleasant way and chose the best composition. The long focal lenght permits using a little background and changing composition without moving the background.

The light scheme of this image is made of only one light, that lights the background. Infact the light hits the background, diffuses and bounce back creating the shadow towards the observer. This provides a better sense of depth. In the case of my iPod it lights also the upper face that, being very smooth, will be very bright. In the front of the object I put two folded pieces of printer paper (one for any side, two in total…). This provides the vertical reflections on the sides, emphasizing the round borders, and illuminates the front wheel of the iPod.

The screenlight is a problem. If you have a lamp bright enough to contrast the nuclear power of the screen backlight (in the iPod Mini it’s really strong, and it’s not adjustable) you are ok, but if you lamp is a bit too dark you’ll have to make a shoot only for the screen, underexposed by one or two stops, and mounting it in Photoshop.

Focus on the front face of the object, close the aperture (f8 or more) and find the right exposure making test shots.

With a photo editing software open the base image, make normal adjustments for the contrast and colour, clone any sensor dust spot (and the inevitable scatches on an ipod used for 4 years). Now mount the screen using layer mask. A little of unsharp mask and the photo is finished!!