Lighting photographic objects without a studio
How to create beautifully lit object photography sitting at your desk.
Upon thinking about the redesign of my site I wanted to achieve something which was calm, clean and simple.
Japanese rock gardens are the symbol of peace and tranquility and the image of isolated Zen stones is so serene.
I wanted to recreate this feeling with a slant towards my work life. I started looking for one important item I use every day without fail. For me, that one object is the mouse. A simple, yet (in Apple’s case anyway!) beautiful piece of product design, created with both form and function.
Yet the function of the mouse is so deeply ingrained, we don’t even notice it anymore. How many times have I slammed mr mouse with frustration directed solely at the screen?. Have I ever really looked at the object in my hand that helps me to earn a living each day?. Not really, and yet it continues to work away quietly, helping to turn ideas into reality. So I set about capturing it’s form.
I wanted to create the ethereal feel of zen stones, to capture the light and shadow, reflection and colour, all without resorting to unnecessary Photoshop trickery and without using anything other than what I had on my desk!. So with my trusty old Panasonic Lumix in one hand and mouse in the other I set about finding a good light source.
I finally realised i’d been staring at the answer all the time. My computer screen would create the perfect backlight. But I needed a good reflection under the mouse too and I initially thought of using a mirror, but I don’t have one on my desk and I don’t use one for work either!. However, my laptop with it’s polished glass screen and with strong light across it’s face produced beautiful reflections.
But not only can you use your screens for reflections and bright lighting, they also can create infinite amounts of mood lighting too. Below is how I achieved the mouse zen look.
I used photoshop to control the lighting on the screen. I filled a canvas with white in Photoshop, selected ‘Full Screen mode’ from the change screen mode menu at the bottom of the toolbar and zoomed right in on the canvas (hold ‘cmd ‘ & ’spacebar’ whilst clicking the mouse, on the pc it’s ‘ctrl’) until it filled the screen. Hit tab to hide the palettes and cmd ‘r’ (ctrl ‘r’) to hide the ruler if it’s visible.
I repeated this exercise with the laptop, but this time I chose a bright blue colour.
I rigged up a platform and lay my laptop on it with the screen facing up and the keyboard at 90° so the weight of the keyboard didn’t pull the laptop into a sitting position.
I positioned the mouse at the angle I needed for the shot and then I switched out the lights (it was night - you can draw your curtains).
I set my camera to the macro setting and focussed on the edge of the mouse, I found filling the lens 50/50 with bright background and dark mouse worked best as it allows sharp focus, yet sets itself to a high shutter speed reducing the risk of camera shake.
After I was satisfied I had the shots I uploaded them to my computer. I created a new file with the canvas set to the size of the final image.
Then I dragged a selection around each of my three final mouse images and copied them into the final document on top of the stretched background layer.
I sampled the best graduated background from my images, dragging a selection from top to bottom. I copied and pasted this to a new layer in the final document and stretched it the entire width of the canvas. I added a small amount of gaussian blur to smooth stretch marks.
I clicked ‘add layer mask’ at the bottom of the layers palette on each mouse layer and using a soft brush blended the background of each mouse with the stretched background of the document. A little tidying with the clone tool to remove blemishes, dust and scratches and a small amount trimming in levels (you have to use your discretion for this) produced my final image.
The great thing about this technique is you can mix any colours you wish and change the brightness, use striped backgrounds, image backgrounds… whatever makes the image right for you.
I hope you like this technique. I’d love to see what you come up with, send me some images and i’ll post the best ones up on this feed.