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.