Breaking Rules With Help From My Friends

Today’s Post is all about breaking some rules.  I tend to stay within the normal bounds of photography, but as I was working on a product shot today I stumbled across something.  I was trying to find the right angle for the shot to make me happy and BOOM! there it was lens flare in my camera.  This is something quite normal when taking images outdoors dealing with sunlight but I rarely get lens flare in a studio setting.  At first it was on the left side of my frame because of the background light which was pretty cool.  I got a shot that made me content, not as happy as I like but it was cool.  My friend Ben Braden who I often shoot with said to me ” Hey man you’ve got a good shot, but why not try to make it better? What will it hurt?”

After thinking about it a few minutes my decision was made,  it had to be what I had pictured in my head.  So I brought two more lights out, one for the background to recreate the lens flare that I had on the left side.  Another to add some more fill light to the product itself, as I doubled the gelled lights I had to increase the amount of normal light to balance the scene out.

I know what your thinking,  ”What’s the big deal? It’s just lens flare Mike”  In order to get the flare to be in the right place in the lens, the lights have to be at the perfect angle for this to work.  A half inch one way or the other and the effect is gone.  The other neat thing is that on the label of the product itself the same bokeh/flare effect is part of the packaging, which you can see below.

Today was a great day and I had a lot of support from my friends who deserve to be recognized, if you have a minute to view some of their work please take a moment because they are fantastic photographers!

Ben Braden - a great photographer with many talents from fashion, commercial,  and landscape this guy does it all.  Just a  great understanding of light in general!

and

Laci Wilson – a fabulous photographer who has an amazing eye for emotion,  from portraits, fashion, weddings, and babies this girl does it all.  Her images will bring a smile to your face I promise!

Thanks for reading today!

MB

The images posted today were created as a student project.