Today, I’m going to do a quick tutorial on the setup for my Surface photo

When I’m shooting in studio, I break down my shots into 5 things:

1. Surface and background

2. Primary Subject

3. Supporting props

4. Camera position

5. Lighting

Surface and Background - I knew that I wanted to have a slight reflection of the subject and at the same time, I didn’t want to have a “horizon line” or where the edge of the surface is. To accomplish this, I used two white plexiglass sheets. One was set up on two sawhorses to be the surface, while the other was set upright on two wooden boxes and leaning against two C-Stands. Sandbags are important here as the plexiglass was quite heavy. I placed sandbags on the C-stands to keep them from tipping over, as well as in front of the plexiglass on the wooden box to keep it from sliding. It was important to make sure the plexiglasses were flush against one another to prevent “light leak” from the strobes.

Primary subject and supporting props - I only used a single object in the shoot, so we can ignore supporting props for today. The object was a Microsoft Surface Pro with the attached keyboard. The Surface pro is quite thin so I wanted to focus on this for the photo. The side of the Surface pro was facing the camera, and was towards the rear edge of the plexiglass to give plenty of room for the reflection. 

Camera Position - This was very important to have setup before focusing on lighting. The first goal of the image was to show how thin the Surface pro was, and for that purpose, I lined up the camera in order to have the back and stand of the surface perfectly lined up with the camera. The center of the lens was near the hinge in the Surface pro. In order to have a reflection, I kept the camera slightly elevated from the level of the plexiglass. 

Lighting - I prefer to start with a single light and work from there in order to see exactly how it is impacting the photo. For this, I started with a bare-bulb strobe under the plexiglass. This gave me the reflection I desired, and met my first objective, the second was to eliminate the horizon line. My second strobe was set up on a C-stand with a bowl reflector aimed at the rear of the plexiglass. I had the strobe lighting the rear plexi dialed up about a stop higher than the one lighting the underneath side to keep some contrast in the reflection, but high enough to eliminate the horizon line. Finally, I brought in one last strobe with a softbox on low power to give a bit of fill light to the top of the surface that wasn’t being lit as much from the plexiglass it was sitting on.

And that’s it! 

If you have any questions, send me an email at brightwoodphotos@gmail.com