For image licensing or print inquiries contact James Markus at jmarkus@photomatter.com
For image licensing or print inquiries contact James Markus at jmarkus@photomatter.com
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Awards
Honorable Mention in Macro Inanimate Photo Contest
Runner Up in Macro Captures Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Anything Fire Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Lapse Of Time Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Experimental Photography Project
Peer Award
Outstanding Creativity
Top Choice
Absolute Masterpiece
Magnificent Capture
Superb Composition
Superior Skill
All Star
Genius
Virtuoso
Top Ranks
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
In my Studio on a product light table I built.Time
3:00:25 PMLighting
Single main left, and a reflector front right.Equipment
Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 60mm f2.8 afd micro lens - 90mm effective focal length due to crop sensor. Alien Bee 800 with a softbox, I either used a popup white reflector, or a piece of white foam core board. (can't remember)Inspiration
My youngest son was at that playing with matches stage, and I needed extra hands to capture this image. I fixed the kitchen match box to the table, and had him strike matches slowly for about two hours straight. He needed to freeze the match head on the striker as soon as ignition began so that the match stick would be sharp. I think it satisfied his need to play with matches. :-) I know it got me the image I was aiming to capture.Editing
I imaged from a raw file to an adobe 98 color space jpg. I applied a global black point adjustment on the background, and painted it in with the history brush. (This is in Photoshop) I think I tried to increase the highlight detail a bit.In my camera bag
Cameras, lenses, filters, adapters, popup reflectors, batteries, flash (if I'm not using studio strobes), triggers, receivers, extra disks etcFeedback
Plan it out. What DOF would work best? What shutter speed, and/or f-stop would be best? Put your camera in manual mode! What degrees kelvin would be the best white balance? Shoot a bunch of test shots. Once you have the technical aspects dialed in work on your composition with even more test shots. Be brutal in your image culling process.