Behind the scenes with a new teapot.

My good friend, and fellow shooter, Dave Barnes recently introduced me to a new ARC store in town. I love to browse the ARC stores every once-in-awhile, but this trip was specifically looking for tea stuff - David is starting a series of images of tea.

Well, I love tea as well. I took the opportunity to scan for a cool teapot - and bingo! There was this nicely shaped Alladin-style teapot for $5!! Cool, a traditional pot to contrast the modern one I had paid good money for recently. Neat. Maybe I'll replace one of the older pots. Probably not, but maybe. Oh, BTW, David also found some Victorian stuff that he was looking for. The plan was for me to assist him in producing his image ideas.



Anyway, as fate would have it, our planned shoot didn't happen that afternoon. I went home and later woke up with an idea for an image in my head. This often happens to photographers - it's maddening, but I suppose, necessary.

It was still fairly light out and I wanted a black background for the white teapot. So, kill the ambient with shutter speed - no problem. Edge light to make the teapot into a more abstract form - a couple of small speedlites set to minimum power still gave me plenty of power for an f/8 aperture. A textured cloth for contrast with the smooth teapot. I'm shooting with a Canon G-9; it's great macro mode and abundant DOF make it a good choice (plus, its so easy to see the image without all that bending and squinting :) ). Here's the setup picture.

And here's the shot it produced.

Okay, but that shape could also look good with a reflection image. I simply removed the textured cloth and used the glass tabletop. Here's the final image.

 

Finally, I also have a pink teapot that has a more modern shape. I thought the reflection could produce another interesting image, especially if I really emphasized the red in the clay.