Client shoot- Charm City Cupcakes

A while back, I was deciding how best to ask my future wife to marry me. I had come up with cupcakes. But where could I find a place for a personalized cupcake? The search was pretty limited, but I found a great place- Charm City Cupcakes. (No affiliation with Charm City Cakes) The owner was VERY happy to help me and supplied these amazing cupcakes for me.

Needless to say, my future life loved it and said yes.

That became a theme for all our major events- cupcakes. Who knew, right?

Over time the owner had tried to line up me to shoot some of her cupcakes for her and her website. Things never lined up until last week. We made arrangements to shoot about 30 or so new mini-cupcakes for a new website she was launching.

I was nervous as heck. I didn't know exactly what I would be getting in to, but I was eager to try. All the cupcakes she made were for display only- no eating these.

I had brought just about every weapon and combination I had handy. Snoot, gridspots, both types of umbrellas, my tripod, reflector, etc. Everything I could carry in one go. Turned out I tried most of it all to get the shots she liked.

It took me a while of trial and error to product an image I was happy with and that I could reproduce.

Here is the setup I used with a 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens. The strobe on the left had a small gridspot on it. I was putting that in at about 1/16 or 1/32 power depending on the type cupcake. The chocolate ones required more light.
The strobe on the right was doing through a shoot-thru umbrella for a softer light. I ranged that one from 1/4 power to 1/2 depending on the type of cupcake.
The camera settings were pretty nailed down consistent.

One thing I had wished I had done was gotten the grid lined up better on each photo. I wound up cropping/rotating just about every photo because it wasn't straight!

*sigh*

I showed the owner as I was shooting how they looked and she was happy. Hopefully next time I will have a proper DIY Macro Light box to use. And yes, she wants me to come back to shoot the regular cupcakes in the near future.

Links

Here are the latest batch of photo related links I have come up:

- Most Popular Photography Hacks of 2009- LifeHacker; I don't agree with all of these, but there are some good ones in there.  Solid list by LifeHacker.

- Tell Us What You'd Shoot Using a Camera With 158 Lenses- Gizmodo; I haven't the foggest. First show me what an image from this 'camera' looks like or can do!

- New iPhone App To Create Lighting Diagrams- DIYPhotography; Thats just too cool. I am such a photo geek.

- I have looked in to providing some sort of 'buy a print of my image' sort of functionalitly, and well- it isn't worth it. Just like having a photo-only website wasn't worth it for me either. I just don't generate enough traffic or interest to really justify that sort of investment of time and energy to get so little in return. A struggling/starving artist I am not.

- What the Duck- Damnit, that is about as close to the truth as I care to admit it is. Gotta get me some merch. Great shirts in there! Wish they had the stuffed duck again...

- If you need a Christmas gift idea for me, here is my B&H wish list!

Christmas card photos

I have been waiting a while to post this information about our Christmas card photos. We put our tree up two days after Thanksgiving, and the next day I did our photos with baby in front of the tree. I thought about for a moment but realized, it would be easy to light.
I needed two lights sources- one for the tree behind baby, and one for baby herself.

The strobe on camera left was a bounce umbrella at 1/2 power. Looking back I should have raised that to full power just to see the difference.

The strobe on camera right was a shoot through umbrella on camera right for lighting baby, 1/4 or 1/8 power depending on the lens used. I used my 17-40 f/4 and my 50mm f/1.8 as different depths of focus were attempted.

Over all I was pretty pleased with the results. Next year I am gonna try something different, just not sure what yet!

Links

Here is a collection of links and information I have collected since my last batch:

- Nova DSLR concept reminds us that cameras need not be boring- Engadget; Interesting design concept. No clue how functional it would be, but still interesting.

- The Touchscreen DSLR Is Finally Upon Us- Gizmodo; Oh good grief. It was bound to happen I guess. The biggest part is the tactical response I get with the Canon wheel on the back of my camera. How the heck is that gonna be replaced? What if I drag my nose across the wrong part of the screen? Eek gads!

- This Is One Classy Laser-Made Collapsable Lamp- Gizmodo; I saw this and the first thing that jumped in my mind was 'a way cool diffuser, grid spot, or even pattern for behind the subject!'

- Nikon Girl music video, The Photo Club- YouTube; Funny.

- Gifts for Aspiring Artsy Photographers- Gizmodo; Yeah, no thanks on most of them. Please use my B+H wish list as my true gift guide! Thanks.

I just love What the Duck: