P#32: Not Your Ordinary Tea Party
Jo Whaley creates an unusual mood in this dramatic tea party shot
When most of us think of a tea party setting, beautiful teacups and saucers usually come to mind -- unless, of course, you're Jo Whaley. Here Jo explains how this unusual tea party shot was created, and what you need to do to create this type of mood and environment.
Setting the Scene
Jo Whaley: this photograph is my Atomic Tea Party shot. It features this odd metal object that looks both like a bomb and a Russian SAM of war. I'll just point out that it has this beautiful rim lighting, so in this set, there's a backlight that helps to delineate the object from the painted backdrop. (click the image for a larger version)
The backdrop is about 5x6 feet and it's painted in the same style that I would paint backdrops for the theater. The tabletop is set up about five feet in front of the backdrop, so there's space to light the backdrop separate from the tabletop, which is real important to do.
If you notice that there's this lurid green on the right hand side coming from the right, and then there's red coming into the middle, and then white on the left so there's different lightings hitting the set, but for the painted backdrop there are just two lights that evenly illuminate the whole thing.
In any still life set, I would recommend your listeners make sure you have enough room from the backdrop to the tabletop so that you don't have cast shadows and you can change the color of the light. In this case, I used a green gel on one of the lights.
In Summary
When taking a still life shot, there's quite a bit that goes into bringing perfection to the photo. In the case of this Atomic Tea Party photo, it meant perfect lighting and a good backdrop to create the right mood and a photograph unlike any other.
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