Flush — A Design Blog by Ivan W. Lam at ivanwlam.com

So yesterday, I successfully (after a devastating double-stuck-tape first try) assembled the accordion book for the Mandolins Brochure that I designed almost two years ago. I planned on putting it in my portfolio, so I had to mock it up and photograph it instead of just showing the flat designs. Today, I had a long photo shoot of the piece, taking pictures from the front, of the inside, of the outside, from different angles, and in both black background and white.

Light Source

Unlike my test photo session from last time, I used natural light through the window as my light source. It’s been cloudy for the past couple of days, and that’s actually a good thing, because the clouds emit a pretty neutral white light through my bedroom window. You’d think that a clear day would be better but I recently realized that clear skies (but not from direct sunlight) actually give your indoor subjects a blue/cyan tint because the sky is usually blue. I’ve just never put those two phenomena together because I assumed that clear skies give off “real” light because when you take pictures outside, you get a “real” range of human skin tones (because the sunlight balances it out or something).

Anyway, having a natural-light photo session meant that I had an unpostponeable deadline of the darkening sky to meet. Surprisingly, I took the last batch of my photos even when it’s too dim to see, thanks to the manual shutter speed setting on my camera; it could make a somewhat dark scene look normal.

Black or White?

So all in all, I took 367 photos today of the brochure, although I had a wide bracket of different exposures in almost every pose; I wanted to choose from more than just two or three bracket shots to make sure I got the best one. Better more than none, they say.

All the photos in thumbnails:

Actual screen size of the thumbnails:

Black or White?

Since this is my first real photo session with the light tent, I’m still trying to decide whether the white background or the black background works better. Of course, in certain situations, one is definitely better than the other. But I have two pairs of relatively unedited photos here to show the difference. What do you think?

1-B. Page 1 and 2 in black background

1-W. Page 1 and 2 in white background

And then there’s 2-B. Exterior in black background

And 2-W. Exterior in white background

At first impression, I think the black ones stand out more. But I have a personal attachment to subjects photographed in white backgrounds, so I’m not ready to toss them out. Maybe there’s not enough light to make the white really white?

Notes on the Light Tent

During this photo session, I learned a few things about using a light tent:

1. I need a larger light tent, for subjects that span wider than the width of the box, like this accordion book.
2. Having a really controlled environment with light is important. I realized that when the relatively white walls behind me and my light-color shirt reflected onto the subject, which led me to pull up a piece of black fabric every time I set off the two-second timer to take a shot.
3. The inside frames of your light tent should be prepped so you can Velcro black/white paper strips at the edges because that part of the frame also reflects unwanted hues onto the subject.
4. The top and bottom edge of the front frame (the frame your camera sees through) are useless, as they can obstruct the view of your high-angle shots or limit the amount of backdrop whitespace you would like to allow for below your subject in the photograph. I can be as brave to say that the entire front frame is useless, although I cannot be as brave yet to completely cut it out, for fear that the entire tent would somehow collapse.

That’s it for this portfolio-building update. Sorry for not posting as often as I wanted; I really want to get this portfolio done, what with the scary economy and all.

Flush.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 21:23 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.