P#22: A Studio Photograph of a Bird Nest

The Beauty of Control

John Siskin: You might be surprised to hear this, but this picture of a bird nest was not taken outdoors. It was taken in a studio.

I found this great bird's nest with all of these beautiful flowers integrated into it. I live in the desert and some of the birds out here are real artists at nest building. I had collected the nest and I knew that I wanted to photograph it, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it. (click the image for a larger version)

About a week later, I was driving along and I saw this great piece of brush -- just really terrific brush with all these sticks coming out of it.

I stopped the car, I turned it around, and I took the giant piece of brush and put it in the back of my car because this is what photographers do. They see things in ways that other people don't see them. They appreciate things that other people don't appreciate because they're driving along and they say, "Whoa, that piece of brush would be great with that bird's nest!" That is exactly was what happened with this particular picture of a birds nest.

Audri Lanford: Exactly.

John Siskin: I took some eggs that I had collected from an abandoned nest and put the whole thing together so the background is a single-light pointed at the gray wall of my studio -- the gray back wall of my studio with a blue gel over it.

If you don't leave enough light on something, it's going to turn this black no matter what color it is to begin with. If you don't light the background, the background's going to be black. In this case, the background probably would have come out as a very, very, very dark grey.

I put the blue gel on the wall to make the blue background. I change the color of backgrounds with gels all the time. It's part of what I think gels are really good for.

Then I used a snoot to light only the nest and one more light to give the whole thing some surround to it. The snoot is brighter than the umbrella that I used to light the whole piece of brush, and that is what makes the nest pop out of the background.

Audri Lanford: It's kind of like a spotlight on it almost.

John Siskin: Right. That's what a snoot does. It's just a tight tube that makes your light work like a spot.

Audri Lanford: When I was looking at this image, I was thinking, "Wow, I wonder how he did this," so that's very interesting; it's gorgeous.

John Siskin: The studio is a marvelous place. Magic happens in the studio because it's all under your control. I want to encourage people to set up a studio. You don't have to have a big studio, but you have to have a studio in order to bring stuff in and create the images that you see in your head.

It's really nice. I had a group studio for 25 years and I had to clean up every time I finished something. Everybody else had to clean up every time they finished something. Now I have a home studio and I don't have to clean up. That's really nice, being able to walk back into something a week later and go, "Well, I wonder how I feel about that today?"

A studio is really a great thing for people. I should point out that I did do an article about home studios and it is on my website.

In Summary

Does it look like this picture was taken natural environment? Believe it or not, it was a studio shoot that created this amazing image. By taking the right elements from nature and combining them with the control of a studio environment, John Siskin was able to create a breathtakingly beautiful photograph of a bird nest.