Still Life Study: Apples
I took a still life photograph out of boredom, which turned out nice. Here's how I edited it.
The first step to taking a studio photograph is preparing the set. In my case, I had little time at my disposal and went for a quick and simple setup. I laid a dark vinyl background on my living room table. I also mounted another background to the back of a chair. The window was my only light source.
To block excessive light, I placed two black flags to the subject's left. At the same time, a third black flag to the right eliminated reflections and deepened the shadows. It's also important to note that I had a circular polariser screwed to the lens; its job was to remove glare from the apples.
The subject was just a few apples. I placed some in a basket lined with a decorative tablecloth. I also strategically placed some star anise in the shot. I wanted cinnamon sticks but found none in the kitchen.
With the set prepared, It was just a matter of taking the shot. I used a nifty fifty, and a fairly old one, so no special hardware was required apart from the polariser I mentioned before. Interestingly, I took the same picture with three cameras: one digital and two analogue. Here are the analogue versions. You'll notice I failed to remove the glare from the apples in the colour photo; this was an oversight, not an intended effect. I simply forgot to turn the polariser.
Film photographs of the same subject
The hardware used to take the above photos was as follows:
- Pentax P30T + SMC Pentax 1:1.4 50 mm @ f/8 + Kodak ColorPlus 200
- Konica Autoreflex T3 + Konica Hexanon 50 mm F1.4 @ f/8 + Ilford Pan 100
The Edits
The base image was pleasing straight out of the camera but a bit of post-processing was required to obtain the chiaroscuro effect I was after. I applied noise reduction (not that there was any visible noise to begin with), lens correction and I increased the black point by just a smidge.
The first step to obtain deep shadows was to adjust the contrast. I did this in the colour balance RGB module. I considerably reduced the shadows and gave a little boost to midtones and highlights.
The colour equaliser module allowed me to adjust the colours to my liking. I subtly brightened and saturated the reds to make the apples pop. At the same time, I darkened and desaturated the oranges and yellows. Since the vectorscope showed some residual green in the image, I also shifted that towards yellow. It made no perceptible difference though.
Burning and masks used
Some burning was needed. I created a frame around the subject using a few masks and darkened that by a bit over 0.5 EV. I also darkened the bottom of the frame, excluding the apple, by an additional 1 EV.
Local contrast
The main apple received a local contrast increase.
All I had to do now was to straighten the image and choose a crop to centre the subject. I was left with the final image.
