Advertisements JP: Hey Alexandre! Can you take us through the process here, how did you go about setting this up? What was your lighting placements like etc?
AW: The process was really simple, but took more effort on the preparations before shooting actually, like cleaning the forks, spoon, egg and surface, placing all the elements where I wanted them to be and just set the lights after. Cleaning saves a lot of time in post production. I put the camera on the tripod to frame and focus it, then took the shots. I had the final idea in mind since the beginning of the shoot, so the photography part was pretty easy. About my lighting; It was a Nikon SB-910 triggered with the pop-up flash, a softbox behind the composition, a black foam-board piece and 2 DIY white reflectors (black foam-board, but some A4 sheet clipped on it to bounce light). The placement of the elements you can see on the light diagram points below.
JP: Very nice indeed! How did you go about getting that killer Yin-Yang style? Did you invert the colors or (I’m assuming) re-shoot? AW: Yeah, actually I never thought about just inverting the colors in post, and even if I did it, the end result would be very different (and ugly I think), I’ve done some shots like this one before as can be seen on my FB page etc, so the idea / setup was pretty clear in my mind and was easy to set up everything. In fact, even the lighting on the white part was different because I didn’t want it to be like an inverted image, but really a different style and mood. JP: That’s ace! And some great commitment to shoot it twice! I totally agree on the aspect of inverting the image destroying the beauty here, the highlights would swap etc. How did you go about processing this picture? AW: The processing part was to develop the RAW files (nothing crazy since I’ve got both images almost the way I wanted it to look in camera), I opened it in PS, added a mask on both layers and stylized it with just a solid color adjustment layer (one filled with black and another filled with white), add my logo and play with it on the exact same idea of the Yin-Yang style. JP: Great! Sounds like a classic case of getting it right at source. AW: Yeah, I’m not against post processing at all, because usually I shoot to edit later (composites for example), but I think that it’s very important to get how you want it to be in camera (the way which will help the most), since it’ll prevent a lot of work later in post. It’s as you’ve said, just add the extra touch on it after. JP: Thanks so much for your time Alexandre! Keep up the great work! AW: Thank you Joseph and keep up the great work too man! You can catch Alex on his plethora of links here: 500PX, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Deviant Art P.S. Apparently eggs and light mix well together, eggs are great for understanding lighting
