Here are some more behind the scenes images from a La Figa shoot. We did two different ingredients – apples (really really tiny ones), and Zucchini. Most of the lighting we have been doing lately has been very low key (in the technical sense of the phrase) – black or dark grey backgrounds, and very sparse shadowy lighting set-ups, usually with just a couple lights. This time we decided to mix it up, so I put together a very high key set-up. We used the white seamless paper, swept down to the floor, then up and over a table (actually two tables put together so it would be as wide as the 9 foot paper, to avoid creases).

There are four lights. Two softboxes just on the background, set to overexpose it to pure white. Usually when I shoot white paper I try to keep the paper visible – white, but not pure white, so this is a bit different. When the paper is visible you need to think about keeping it evenly lit, which can be a bit tricky. With it overexposed like this, you don’t really have to worry about it too much. The key light is a large rectangular softbox turned sideways and put about eight feet high in front. There will be a little bit of bounce coming back up from the paper as well. There is also a kicker/hair light up high and behind. Since one of our strobes is in the shop,  I used a Nikon SB-800 flash unit in SU-4 remote mode (so it slaves to any flash) here. This worked very well, and it had no trouble keeping up with the studio strobes. Since it is only a providing a little bit of highlight I wasn’t too concerned about whether the color temperatures matched.

Here are a few shots that show the set-up…

As usual, I am not going to show the final images we got, as those are being saved for publication in the book. However, here is a sample image that shows the results of this lighting set-up…

The next set-up – Zucchini Lingerie – was almost the same. The only difference was that we pulled the table out, and had two models standing on the paper. Here is Tiberio putting together the Zucchini Lingerie…