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alanwsmith

Guitar

Custom made stratocaster

Custom made stratocaster
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NIKON D5200

settings

Aperture f/2 ISO 1600 Shutter 1/10 Focal Length 350/10

upload_date

Feb, 2016

Views

1581

Likes

+234

Awards

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Contest Finalist in Commercial Shots Photo Contest

Peer Award

+83

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Behind The Lens

Location

The photo was taken in the living room of my home in Milton Keynes, UK. I had the guitar laying in a hard case on a sofa and positioned my camera level with the end of the case.

Time

I remember it was late one evening, so I have had to cheat a little and take a look at the metadata of the photo which shows the exact time was 21:42 on the 19th October 2015.

Lighting

To obtain the lighting I wanted for the photo, I turned off all the lights in the room except for one bedside lamp. I moved the lamp around until I got the effect I was looking for. The difficulty with such low light was to the lamp in a position where the lighting was right for the focal point.

Equipment

This was shot on a Nikon D5200 with a Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens attached. No flash was used, just the bedside lamp.

Inspiration

I wanted to take a photo of another hobby of mine in a creative way. I was inspired by other guitar photos I had seen, however as this is my own custom made guitar I thought it had something more to offer. The colours, the lines and the finish on the guitar made it very interesting to photograph.

Editing

Surprisingly not that much as the colours and overall look was pretty much there. The post-processing I did on the photo was additional vignetting to bring the focus in a bit. I also darkened the shadows and lightened up the highlights which made the lines and strings pop a little more.

In my camera bag

Since taking this photo, the contents of my bag has changed considerably. It used to be a Nikon D5200 with a Nikon 35mm f/1.8, Tamron 17-55mm f/2.8 and a Nikon 55-200. Now it contains a Nikon D750 with 3 Nikon Prime Lenses, 50mm f/1.8G which was the first lens I bought with the camera, 85mm f/1.8G and the 105mm f/2.8G Macro.

Feedback

I find it's good to have a vision in your head, or written down, of what you are trying to achieve and how you want the photo to look. Yes you can post process to the extreme but then too much takes away from the photo. I had an idea of how I wanted this photo to look, so I spent more time setting up the shot than I did actually taking it. Positioning the guitar in the correct way, making sure the light came from a certain angle. Take some test shots at different Aperture settings and adjust the ISO if necessary, as getting the detail in the shot can be tricky in low light. However don't go too high with the ISO to avoid any unwanted noise in the photo. Use a tripod to keep the shot sharp. I used to think tripods were just a pain, got in the way and took ages to setup, but I soon came to realise how useful they are especially for the finer, more detailed shots.

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alanwsmith

alanwsmith

Guitar

Custom made stratocaster

Behind The Lens

See more amazing photos, follow alanwsmith

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