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Working for Popular Photography Magazine and a couple other magazines, I end up shooting
a lot of studio stuff, mainly product photography. So these are just a couple of examples of
just really simple lighting setups that are just really effective. This was shot with
three lights, one on one side, one on the other side, and one coming straight in. And
again, studio photography is really kind of about just tweaking and getting things just
right. If you like to futz with things, if you're sort of OCD, it's really great for
that because you could spend hours and hours lighting one product.
This is a single light set up. This is just a cell phone, just from above, kind of shot
down on a piece of red paper. Really simple, again, really effective. This is the same
thing. This is shot with three lights, one light on either side and one coming in. The
one coming in had a blue gel, which is like a blue piece of cellophane, to give it a little
bit of blue right here.
This one in particular is actually a composite of three images. And this, obviously, is not
a studio product shot. This is a really goofy self portrait of myself and this was shot
with three lights and actually a ring flash going around the lens. One light on either
side and the ring flash right there. I just wanted to give it a very poppy, sort of caricature
look.
The great thing about studio photography is that you can tweak it. You can really work
with it to get it just right. Most of these were shot with flashes, off-camera flashes
like the one here, obviously not connected, although some of these were shot with professional
studio gear as well. Both are effective. These are a lot cheaper, but it just gives you a
lot of options.
That's some of the basics of studio photography.