WEEKLY LIGHTING THEME: "Sailing Shoes"

This week's Lighting Theme will be in the form of an assignment in

which you can use any lighting technique that you like. Feel free to

use strobe, tungsten, fluorescent, hard light, diffused light, non-

photographic lighting equipment and even available light. THIS THEME

WILL RUN FOR TWO WEEKS so there will be plenty of time for everyone

to contribute an image if they want to.

 

There are two considerations for photos to be on topic for this theme.

 

The FIRST CONSIDERATION is that you take some active control of the

light on your subject. Obviously if you are shooting indoors or in

the studio you can create all of the lighting. Look at previous

Lighting Themes archived in the Administration section of this

lighting forum for ideas.

 

You can also use existing, available light if you modify or control

it in some way. You can do this simply by diffusing the light with a

scrim, bouncing the light with mirrors or just using a fill card,

reflector or gobo.

 

The SECOND CONSIDERATION for photos to be on topic for this theme is

that everyone must use the same subject matter. I've tried to come up

with a subject to be photographed that everyone might own. I first

thought that a camera would be a good choice of subject because

everyone here owns a camera. But then I realized that many people may

only own one camera. That would be awkward.

 

So.....I've settled on shoes as the subject for this theme. That's

right...SHOES. Everybody owns, or has access to, at least one pair

of shoes. You can photograph one shoe or a pair of shoes or even a

dozen pairs of shoes. You can use your favorite pair of shoes or

shoes that you hate. You can use shoes that belong to you or shoes

that belong to a family member or friend.

 

You can photograph these shoe(s) in a place or setting, indoors or

outside, on a clean studio sweep or sticking out from under your bed.

You can light and photograph these shoes as if they were a piece of

art, as a product advertisement, in the form of a documentary of the

day in the life of a shoe, as cultural icons, as a lifestyle or

fashion statement, or in any other way. It's your choice. Make the

lighting and point of view as interesting as you can and be sure to

tell us why you made the choices that you did.

 

To start this theme off on a good foot, so to speak, here's a

motorcycle boot of mine that I shot in the studio this afternoon.

This boot is 6 years old with over 90,000 (s)miles on it. It's worn

and nasty and black and has a bit of a shine on its surface in spite

of not being polished or cared for very well.

 

Because the surface is shiny, I used a large diffused light source as

the main light. In this case, a medium softbox about 2 ft. above and

centered in front of the boot. As described in some of the earlier

lighting themes, a large diffused light source creates soft

transparent specular highlights on shiny surfaces. This type of shiny

dark subject is primarily a photograph of the light sources reflected

in its surface.<div></div>

In this next shot, I've added a small hard light in a 7" reflector from the right side. This light creates brighter highlights on the creases in the leather and on the edges of the buckle.<div></div>

This third shot shows a combination of the softbox light from the first photo and the hard light from the second.<div></div>

In this last shot I've added a 5" round shaving mirror on the left side of the boot which bounces light from the soft box and creates a second set of diffused highlights on the left bottom side of the boot and particularly on the left edges of the buckle.

 

So there it is. Two lights and a mirror which acts like a third light. I hope you have fun with this theme.

 

In an effort to get you in the mood for the subject of this theme and at the risk of revealing my age, I'll leave you with some lyrics from a tune called "Sailing Shoes" by the band "Little Feat".

 

"You gotta put on your Sailing Shoes,

 

Put on your Sailing Shoes

 

Everyone will start to cheer

 

When you put on your Sailing Shoes " .......Little Feat

 

Anybody remember ? Anyone ?<div></div>

My first thought was the Robert Palmer version (with "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley"), but I remember the Little Feat version, too.

Texas Rose Cafe!... t (Roy Estrada was the Indian of the Group:^)... t

I'm currently at work but I'll have a go at this when I get home. I've got a pair of motorcycle boots that should be entertaining to light - they are mostly shiny plastic

Hi Brooks,<br>

Well I must say I'm quite honored that you took up on my idea with the assignments... I think that format will be really interactive (lets hope so!)<br>

<br>

Shoes... Well thats an easy one for me, I have maybe 50 pictures of shoes from when I started with photography (most of them awfully bad :-> )<br>

I will make a new one tonight (I already have an idea... that's unusual for a monday morning, and still no coffee yet!)<br>

<br>

Meanwhile, to start this off, here is a really old one, taken on a sanyo digital P&S... As far as I can remember, the lighting was a living room halogen lamp (the kind with a boom...) through a large sheet of drawing paper, from dead front and above. It was pure luck that the shot turned out nice, I had no clue what I was doing :-) Hope it fits the theme!<br>

<br>

I'll post a new one tonight or tomorrow<div></div>

Ok - here's my first attempt.

320W/s strobe just out of view to the left fired through a 3ft x 3ft softbox. Off to the right, a much smaller unit (no idea what power it is) fired through a snoot aimed at the logo. There was also a piece of white foamcore as a reflector but I don't know that it's quite in the right place

(For those in the UK, the key light is a Portaflash 550 and the fill is a Portaflash 336VM)

 

Hope you like it<div></div>

A slightly closer view<div></div>

I shot this wanting to convey emotions with inanimate objects. The lighting was monolight bounced to the ceiling to provide minimal reflections on the old pair. Hope that's enough for 'active control of the light'.<div></div>

I'm new to this group, but I thought I'd join in. Here's my attempt with my son's baby shoes and a clip on desk lamp with a piece of white printer paper as the background.

 

This was fun,

Teresa<div></div>

Here is my contrubution. I shot this ladys high fashion Italin shoe for a client recently. this was to be a knockout for a catologue. I needed to get some highlight under the sole of the shoe so I placed a reflected surface under the shoe. I found that I was getting to much of a highlight onto the back of the shoe and so I placed black paper just under and behind the shoe.

 

the lighting setup is three lights. a 4x3 softbox to camera right high abouve about 3ft. a 3x2 softbox to camera left about 12in. above. a barndoor to camera left and in front of the shoe. I used the barndoor to light the top portion of the shoe.<div></div>

<p>Gudde moien alleguer,</p>

 

<p>I promised to deliver a new shot, so here it is...<br>These are my riding boots (my other expensive hobby...), my former competition boots and the ones I use now :-)</p>

 

<p>The idea was to show the diffrence between the two ways of doing the same thing, so I figured I could show them side by side...</p>

 

<p>I was always fascinated by the look of the Calvin Klein adds, so I tried to achieve the same look (without the dark banner on the left side with a marketing slogan)</p>

 

<p>It was done using a 10D, 2 420ex's and an ST-E2... one of the flashes was behind the cowboy boot to lighten the background (2 stops over the other light), the other one was bounced into a large white panel (a matting board in fact), to keep the specular highlights translucent and diffused (thanks to the lighting themes I knew how to do this :-) ) to the camera right, just out of the frame<br>

On the left of the boots I had a large panel again to provide some fill, angled quite flatly at the cowboy boot, with a black card to keep the light off the ring on the boot (the ring still almost burned out, should have used a larger card maybe)<br>Desaturated and sharpened in PS</p>

 

<p>I hope this fits the theme! I have one other idea for this thread, but that will have to wait a little bit (as we have 2 weeks anyway!)</p>

forgot the caption... <br>Once again:<div></div>

here's a variation to it (to make it more obvious :->)... it's the same setup as the other shot<div></div>

All good work.

This image was part of an assigned project on the theme "red". To add some interest and create a little reflection, I placed the shoes on a red gel and used white seamless as the background. The background was lit using a Vivitar flash while the main was a mono-light which were both triggered from a Canon 550 EX speedlite that was mounted to the camera left. In hindsight, I think I would have eliminated the curve of the gel....

 

Mike<div></div>

My apologies for the large image - my first posting and I thought I had it even after reading the FAQ's. I have re-sized it.

 

Mike<div></div>

Mike i couldn't help but revamp your image a bit with a curves adjusment and sharpening. Hope you don't mind.<div></div>

Ok,

 

Here is my first post to the forum. I have to admit this was done a bit ago. I hope that's ok. I don't really have time this week to shoot some shoes. It was done with tungsten light using umbrellas actually. One from the right with a fill from the left and of course the glow in the back. I'm still not overly thrilled with the outcome. I think it washed the whites out although I can't say I've ever tryed to redo it. Thanks again for you guys doing this forum.

 

Greg Orlando<div></div>

I meant to comment under the shot that these shoes are not even made anymore I'm pretty sure. That's how long ago this was done. Again I hope it's ok to post older shots.

 

Thanks

Garry, Brooks, so what do you say, will there be another lighting theme next week? You have been quiet on this one so far...

Claude,

 

Yes there will be a weekly lighting theme next week. It will be presented by Jonathan Brewer. I've seen some of Jonathan's work and he is an excellent portrait photographer. I'll announce his theme later today or tomorrow.

 

BTW Claude, if you'd like to present a theme yourself, drop me a line and we'll discuss it.