With a day off and nothing to do, I decided to put my time to good use working on my product photography. After looking around the house for something that would be fun to photograph I decided on the knife my girlfriend Angela got me a few years ago. The Helle Temagami is the official knife of Les Stroud from the show Survivorman. A great knife and I'm sure it will last generations.
I started by building a little set from stuff found in the back of my East Nashville house. I dug up some moss, found a piece of fire wood with moss growing on it, grabbed a stick and a stone. I put it all together, moved a few leaves around and was happy with the results.
After placing the knife on set, I put my first light in place, softbox as a back light. I put a fill light directly across from my back light then filled the shadows with two foam-core cards. One was placed directly in front of the camera with a slot cut for the lens and the other to fill a little bit of the shadows in the background.
I liked the over all feel and after changing the knife orientation I went through adding reflective mirrors and flags. I put one mirror to make the logo on the sheath pop a little more and another to add separation between the stump and the background. I added one flags to shade the rock, one for the stick and one to bring the knife handle's brightness down.
After studying the image a bit I decided I wasn't happy with how the light fell off at the tip of the knife. I spent some time moving my fill light around until I got something I liked. However, I thought I'd need to do a little bit of composite work in Photoshop to get it better. I combined three photos: the first was my favorite overall, the second had a nice sharp transition from the main blade to the knife edge and the last was my favorite for the tip of the knife.
Be sure to check out my other product, food or composite photography.
Fielder