Back in the studio!

Finally… I’m back in the studio! 

I’m so excited. I’ve hardly moved off my computer for at the last month in a half… putting together my print shop on Fine Art America… that to finally be back in my studio shooting feels so good.  

I went out antique shopping yesterday… looking for new pretties to inspire me… and boy was it a good day of shopping! I came home with several new props that I cannot wait to start using. Some lace, a wonderful wood print tray, some antique earrings, and a few more goodies…

Maybe a wood box or 2… which my friend promptly said “what??? more wood boxes??? where are you going to put those??” and I laughed… because this was coming from a woman who has collected many… I mean many… very large… vintage TVs… like what your grandmother had… in their tv case and everything… for a future photo project she is dreaming up… and ALL of my wood boxes… probably take up less space than 1 of her TVs. So yeah… I got a chuckle out of that! I do love some pretty vintage wood boxes… most of mine have art supplies stashed in them… that makes me love them even more! 

I am newly re-obsessed with ballet shoes… since I came across some that were blue instead of the traditional light pink toe shoes we always see. And I say re-obsessed… since every couple of years – I want to do a ballet series again. It is a subject I love to revisit… and I feel a whole new series and direction coming with the colored shoes and fun decorations on the… so we’ll see where this leads me in the coming weeks and months!

Today’s shoot was pretty simple – so check it out below:

This is a bit of a pullback of today’s set up so you can see exactly what I was working with. I dropped a pretty dress with lace trim on it over my favorite wood crate. Then I leaned the ballet shoes into the dress… I added the vintage earrings to the shoes for a little extra bling… then draped a pretty piece of antique lace over the top of the shoes for an extra layer and some texture.

I’m at my table by the window. It is about 11 am in the morning – so I have some good light coming in my East facing window. Since the light is strong when the sun is shining directly in it – I have my photography skrim in the window to diffuse the light.

I have all the lights in the room off. I don’t want to have any competing light sources or light colors on my setup. I only want the natural light coming in from the window on my setup.

I do have a dark backdrop behind my table… but I’m not really using it in this setup – it is just there because it is always there. 

Here are a few of the photos I got from this setup. I was using my Lensbaby Velvet 56 lens.. on about an f3 (the setting was between the 2.8 and the 4 on the lens)… I kept the ISO at 100 to prevent any grain and I was able to shoot above 1/60s of these to keep any motion blur from occurring. If it had been any darker out – I would have gone ahead and set up on a tripod to make sure I got a good focus on my subject.

I processed these with the Spring Seasons Presets for the color photos… and used them on the black n white photos also – using the preset than changing the setting in Lightroom to Black n White to convert them.

I hope you enjoyed a little look behind the scenes at today’s setup… and until next time… I’m wishing you all a very creative week! xoxo Denise

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