Even after 35 years of messing around with cameras as a professional, and acquiring an arsenal of gear that chokes my SUV every time I have to go on location, I am still frequently drawn toward simplicity and minimalism.
My wife ordered a suction-cup-hook-thingy (SCHT) from Amazon a couple of weeks ago so that we could hang soap scrunchies in the shower. When I opened the box, I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was, and I immediately confiscated it and ran off to the studio. I was enthralled by the lines and the finish and the subtle colors (our whole house is brushed bronze, except for things like sheets, of course).
And so I fussed with this thing for hours, trying to find an arresting composition and trying out different lighting setups.
“My goal was to make this ordinary bathroom gadget look like it had been designed by NASA”
I finally hit on this angle and settled on a single light source (yes, my minimalistic tendencies extend to lighting), plus a couple of white cardboard reflectors. After that, it was just a matter of dialing in the exposure, creating the focus stack (about 12 images, I think), and then fussing out the details in post (and there was a lot of fussing in post, including adding the otherworldly red glow to the suction bit). And, since this was a gizmo for the shower, my last little detail was to add in a sparse-few water droplets.
And so there you have it, yet another example of the ordinary becoming extraordinary, made with nothing but imagination and a single speedlight.
Here’s the big Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 100mm f/2.8 macro @ f/8, ISO 100, 1/16oth of a second, 1 speedlight, a para-umbrella the size of Montana, and cardboard reflectors, 12-image stack
