Today we are starting out a brand new series called the Anatomy of a Shot. Anytime we have an image that we think you might like the see the details we will post it here. For our first shot I thought I would post about the preview image for the new DSLR course I am teaching at a Beautiful Mess.
We realized only shortly before the site went live that we needed an image that could be cropped in multiple different ways to represent the course. It would have to be able to be a banner, a full photo, and a square. That is a lot to ask of one image so I wanted to come up with something great. I tossed the idea out of shooting cameras with flowers and the ABM team like it.
So the very next morning I went down to, Travis Wholesale, our local flower wholesale to the public shop. Most big cities will have shops like this…google to the rescue! Amanda had called a few shops the day before and knew that one in particular had bright ranunculus, so I headed there. They also had some beautiful bright red and pink anemone, and fresh daffodils. We used every single flower we bought and added in some twists of ribbon to fill any holes. All together my selections looked like this all bundled up.
We set the image up at my home and Amanda, being the brilliant friend she is, came over to help. Originally we had planned to either use a gold paper backdrop or a piece of white board but neither of those felt right. The flowers were so beautiful and the cameras so important to the shot that we didn’t want anything to draw attention away. So we ended up just using the dark metal surface of my coffee table and setting up the entire shoot in my living room. By choosing a darker material the flowers were able to really stand out and the texture of the metal was a nice contrast to the cameras.
Luckily Amanda pulled out her cell phone so we have these images below, showing the depth of the cameras and flowers from the side as we set them up, on the right. And an image where you can see that we were using the window light from behind me and I had to stand on a ladder in order to get high enough to take the actual photo on the left.
What you don’t see here is Amanda holding up a piece of white foam core board on the opposite side of the coffee table from me bouncing light back into the shadows. (She couldn’t get the shot and hold the board at the same time) I could have shot just standing above the table with a wide-angle lens, but if I would have done that the perspective on the cameras that were close to the edge of the frame wouldn’t be right. They would look stretched out and distorted. So I got up higher and used a longer lens to correct the perspective and with a little help from Lightroom for editing. We were able to get this shot:
I’m guessing you want to know the settings? Am I right?
- Aperture F/4
- Shutter Speed 1/100
- ISO 800
If these settings have no meaning to you, you might want to check out the class! If they do, I hope this post helps you with future photographs!
Let us know if you would enjoy more of this type of posts?
p.s. Don’t forget to enter our amazing giveaway! Click the box in the right margin, or scroll down!
Gorgeous photo!!!
Yep, y’all are awesome and talented.Photo looks amazing!
Awesome! I was totally wondering what the creative process was behind this shot. Looking forward to the class.
The new site looks awesome! How Fun!!! Looking forward to new photography classes!
Love this type of post. And it is so helpful to see your camera settings so thanks for including those!
ADORE THIS SHOT!!
I loved seeing how the photo was shot along with the camera settings, I would like to see more of these type of posts.
Dark background was a perfect choice, the colours are so vibrant!!! More similar posts…yes please!!
Such a genius idea to surround the cameras with flowers, and the photo turned out incredible. Very much looking forward to this series!
Haha. I totally thought you had an error in your text! I saw your line about wanting to shoot cameras with flowers and I thought you meant you wanted to shoot flowers with cameras! Then I kept reading and then saw your picture! Lol. You really did want to shoot cameras with flowers….literally! Love it! Looking forward to signing up for this class as a former student! I need a brush up! -Kathy
Curious about the behind the scenes?
Today we are starting out a brand new series called the Anatomy of a Shot. Anytime we have an image that we think you might like the see the details we will post it here. For our first shot I thoug…
handmademood.com
Kathy, I actually thought the EXACT same thing when Candice told me her plan… and then it clicked (haha. clicked.). I LOVE how it turned out!
I love behind the scenes info on shoots!! Please, more posts like these!! :)