The Cuff Photo Shoot

After the weekend photo shoot for Twelve by Twelve, I decided it was time to try to get some good photos of what I have been creating. I bought some black velvet for a backdrop and pulled out the tripod. It is amazing what a good set up can do! I don't have any special lighting, so I am still relying on natural daylight. This creates rather dramatic lighting coming through the window. My biggest challenge was getting the right exposure with the black velvet. The camera automatically wanted to over expose everything to make up for the dark background. All detail was lost in the strong contrast. I found that I had to make sure the light was very diffused and crank the exposure way down. With such long exposure times, I never could have done it without the tripod. I did find that I had to wait for the washing machine to finish the spin cycle because even that was causing some vibration that ruined the crispness. All in all, I'm happy with how the photos turned out. Next, I will have to work on staging, but for now I will just stick with the black velvet.