Assignment 5: Still Life

ChangWhan Yea

Requirement 3: Caustics

Background: White printing paper, both on floor & back wall. Curved the back wall paper into the paper on the fall to eliminate the borderline between the two papers.

Light: White desk lamp positioned on the back of the bottles and facing downwards.

I took some of my roommate's Calvin Klein perfumes and set them on my mini studio. Due to the light in the back, the caustic effect illuminated the bottles towards the camera like mood lights. Since the light source was really close to the subjects, it created a "vignetting effect" on the background at the outer corners where the light rays did not reach. Also, because the light was beaming straight at the lens, I had to reduce the aperture to minimum size and turn off every other light source in the room.

White balance was intentionaly set to 3rd degree Tungsten, adding a blue shade on top of the entire scene. I realized that it'd be cool to make my own advertisement of the Calvin Klein Man series so I placed the bottles on top of the image and left space on the bottom for the logo.

Post-processing was crucial for the resulting image. The "Euphoria" bottle had much cleaning to do: I brushed off the dust on its lid and erased the distracting reflection of the "Obsession" bottle. The "vignetting effect" on the outer corners was also unbalanced, so I copied the right corner into a different layer, reversed it and placed it on top of the left corner. I googled the Calvin Klein logo, manually carved out the letters with the eraser tool, and placed it in the center of the bottom.