Weekly Assignment #106: Silverware Ad

Nikolai

This time let's take a simple and fairly ubiquitous household item - silverware - and make a full page magazine ad out of it. The imaginary magazine title is Digital Kitchen (if you wanna go for the front cover:-). The imaginary brand name is up to you (but try to stay away from registered trademarks and copyright violations). You can utensils instead.
Naturally quite some post-processing should be involved.
Note: this is a rather technical challenge, requiring tricky lighting, avoiding undesired reflections, making the final image appealing, etc. Try it on friends/colleagues to see it works...
One entry per post. Multiple entries per person are OK provided they are substantially different. As a reply to the entry post please feel free to provide source frames, setup shots, settings, PS techniques, etc.
Lights, camera, silverware!

eL eSs Vee

This one'll be fun, and I can use some new silverware.

eL eSs Vee

Something tells me I'll soon be seeing this guy. ~~~>

Shortly after I'd taken everything down and shoved the card into the reader, I remembered it had to be a full-page advertisement. As you can see, I shot it horizontally: Fine for a calendar, maybe, but no good for a full-page magazine ad.

**Sitting on hands to protect knuckles from Nikolai's ruler**

Nikolai

eL eSs Vee wrote:

Something tells me I'll soon be seeing this guy. ~~~>

Shortly after I'd taken everything down and shoved the card into the reader, I remembered it had to be a full-page advertisement. As you can see, I shot it horizontally: Fine for a calendar, maybe, but no good for a full-page magazine ad.

**Sitting on hands to protect knuckles from Nikolai's ruler**

Good shot.. Although magazine ads usually do have a cleaner bg and way less text. I'm talking lifestyle mags, though, not pennysaver...

:sigh And I was hoping for something else BUT knives... We already had those, remember? And this is more like kitchenware, not silverware... Sorry for being unclear...

Guys: forks, spoon, __table__ knives... Silverware...

eL eSs Vee

Well, you did allow untensils. And I guess steak knives can be one or the other.

No problem, Nikolai. I'll do another item tomorrow, anyway. :cool

angevin1

Hope this works.....C&C S'il vous plait~

tom

Duh_Vinci

Hello all, new here. Have not touched camera in weeks, "winter blues" I guess So I thought this theme would give me a chance to get back into it and try something different.

Couldn't find any silverware in the house that caught my attention for closeup, so I opted for a "shape"... Hope this works and indeed looking for the feedback on how to improve.

It was shot in color, converted to B&W and negative - does it comply to rule 1?



Regards,
D

Nikolai

angevin1 wrote:

Hope this works.....C&C S'il vous plait~

tom

Nice entry Tom!
My biggest complaint is that those bills are stealing quite some attention for the silverware. They are much brighter, and much more in the center of attention. I'd say it's an add for bill/coin collector mag, not a silverware one...

Nikolai

Duh_Vinci wrote:

Hello all, new here. Have not touched camera in weeks, "winter blues" I guess So I thought this theme would give me a chance to get back into it and try something different.

Couldn't find any silverware in the house that caught my attention for closeup, so I opted for a "shape"... Hope this works and indeed looking for the feedback on how to improve.

It was shot in color, converted to B&W and negative - does it comply to rule 1?

Regards,
D

D, magniwesome entry!
Welcome to the Class!

angevin1

Nikolai wrote:

Nice entry Tom!
My biggest complaint is that those bills are stealing quite some attention for the silverware. They are much brighter, and much more in the center of attention. I'd say it's an add for bill/coin collector mag, not a silverware one...

Thanks!

eL eSs Vee

That's a great shot, Duh Vinci! Very well done!

NateW

Here's my initial go (doubt I'll have time for a few weeks after this, so thought I'd give it a go even if I couldn't perfect it in this shoot.)
(edit: oof! Those spoon reflections are rough!)

setup shot to follow.


Setup was a painting drop cloth clamped across the ceiling with the umbrella reflector aimed up at it. This was to get the softest light I could relatively easily get.
Since the 'ware was on a velvet backdrop attached to the ceiling and draped over a couch section (double cushion for extra height), the remaining velvet was eating too much light and making the top half of some of the 'ware black, so I added the white cloth hanging in front of the velvet to reflect a bit more. Had to use something to keep the angles good on the sheet though.
Camera was on a tripod stuck about as high as I could possibly make it an remote triggered (to remove me from the reflections).

Reflection (not on the spoons, but on the setup): use more white; get the strobe under the reflection plane of the 'ware, esp. the spoons; it would be best to have a white dome evenly lit all the way around the darn things, so if I got a white sheet and figured out how to suspend it around the 'ware, then used the same ceiling bounce technique with the camera shooting through a small hole in the white dome (tent?)...
This is definitely a rough go! Not an easy assignment, as Nikolai said.
Setup shot: (and you'll have to forgive the ridiculous mess of the multi-purpose wrapping paper/sewing/studio room)

Nikolai

NateW wrote:

Here's my initial go (doubt I'll have time for a few weeks after this, so thought I'd give it a go even if I couldn't perfect it in this shoot.)
(edit: oof! Those spoon reflections are rough!)

setup shot to follow.

Setup was a painting drop cloth clamped across the ceiling with the umbrella reflector aimed up at it. This was to get the softest light I could relatively easily get.
Since the 'ware was on a velvet backdrop attached to the ceiling and draped over a couch section (double cushion for extra height), the remaining velvet was eating too much light and making the top half of some of the 'ware black, so I added the white cloth hanging in front of the velvet to reflect a bit more. Had to use something to keep the angles good on the sheet though.
Camera was on a tripod stuck about as high as I could possibly make it an remote triggered (to remove me from the reflections).

Reflection (not on the spoons, but on the setup): use more white; get the strobe under the reflection plane of the 'ware, esp. the spoons; it would be best to have a white dome evenly lit all the way around the darn things, so if I got a white sheet and figured out how to suspend it around the 'ware, then used the same ceiling bounce technique with the camera shooting through a small hole in the white dome (tent?)...
This is definitely a rough go! Not an easy assignment, as Nikolai said.
Setup shot: (and you'll have to forgive the ridiculous mess of the multi-purpose wrapping paper/sewing/studio room)

Nate, thank you!
Very nice entry, although you still got quite some of the uneven reflections. Silverware *is* a very tough task to do right.
Great setup, thank you very much for sharing!
Hint: next time shoot *through* the canvas (I mean - make a hole or a fold)

NateW

Nikolai wrote:

Nate, thank you!
Very nice entry, although you still got quite some of the uneven reflections. Silverware *is* a very tough task to do right.
Great setup, thank you very much for sharing!
Hint: next time shoot *through* the canvas (I mean - make a hole or a fold)

Yeah, the reflections on the spoons were gonna kill me! Clearly, it was going to take more time/practice to get this right and I decided maybe bed was a better idea.
The whole tent idea (and shooting through it) does seem like the right way to go, and had I really done it right, I would have pulled something like that off. For that matter, I suppose I could tent the 'ware with the sheet of white cloth I was using as a reflector..... Hadn't thought of that until just now (I'd been thinking I would need a bigger(read new) piece of material).

Thanks for the feedback!