My Light Control class just finished up at PCNW. For my final project I decided to try something a little different – mirrors. I found a smallish piece of mirror in my workroom, stopped at the grocery store for a bag of fruit, and went into the studio not really sure what I was going to do with it all.

My approach was to set a piece of fruit on the mirror, arranging large pieces of white foamboard around the perimeter so they would create a solid white reflection in the mirror. I began lighting with two Mole Richardson tungsten spots, bouncing off the foamboard for fill light. The mirror was small enough that I had to frame carefully, but I loved the surreal quality of the resulting images.

After a while I got tired of the spotlights, and wanted something less hard for lighting the very shiny Granny Smith apple I had brought. I put away the tungstens and brought out a single strobe with a large softbox, placing it very close to my subject. This produced less interesting texture on the pears but a smoother background, as well as good light on the apple. It was also good for macro shots, although not particularly dramatic.

This was a fun project to play around with. I’m hoping to do more with this idea once I have some lights at home and can use a larger mirror. What subjects do you think would be fun to shoot this way?

I’m taking another class at Photographic Center Northwest this quarter. This one is called Light Control, and is supposed to teach us how to manage lighting, whether it’s natural, artificial, or a mix of both. There’s a huge prejudice in the food blogging world against using artificial light for food photography, but it seems to me that it works fine as long as you know what you’re doing (and not using on-camera flash). It just takes a bit of practice, and the right equipment.

For our first assignment we had to go into the lighting studio and do a basic still-life shoot using a single strobe covered with a soft box, then adding a second strobe as needed. I took in a bag of fruit and played around with various close-ups, and particularly enjoyed this rather dramatic shot of a lime and a satsuma. It’s a little underexposed but I like the deep shadows. Hopefully I’ll figure out how to get less of a shiny spot on the fruit in the future.