T-Storm
This was a submission to the 52Frames group challenge "Unusual".
Credit to leboef.deviantart.com for cloud brush and Free Brushes by B...
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This was a submission to the 52Frames group challenge "Unusual".
Credit to leboef.deviantart.com for cloud brush and Free Brushes by Brusheezy for lightning brushes.
Read less
Credit to leboef.deviantart.com for cloud brush and Free Brushes by Brusheezy for lightning brushes.
Read less
Jul, 2015Views
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Zenith Award
Creative Winter Award
Great Shot
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken in my home studio on Long Island, NY. My mother is a librarian, so she's given me a lot of really old interesting looking books over the years. I went around the many bookshelves in my house and chose ones that would reflect some of the colors of the teacup I used, and put them all in front of a chalkboard vinyl backdrop.Time
This was taken in the evening of July 22nd, 2015. The sun hadn't quite set yet, but I was shooting with continuous lighting from a soft box and I didn't want natural light coming in, so I blacked out the windows.Lighting
I used two soft boxes with daylight balanced CFL bulbs positioned to either side of my setup.Equipment
My workhorse camera body is a Nikon D800 and I chose a Nikkor 50mm prime lensInspiration
I shot this photo for a challenge from a photography group I'm in called 52Frames. Every week, a new challenge theme is set and you need to shoot it during that week (no pulling from your archives!) The theme for that week was "Unusual" and I wanted to make a photo that depicted the phrase "storm in a teacup", meaning a small event that's been blown out of proportion.Editing
I used curves in Photoshop to increase the contrast a bit. I also dodged and burned areas of the books and teacup for emphasis. I used the clone stamp to even out some areas of the background and remove distractions. The cloud and lightning bolt was created with a combination of brushes. The cloud is from user leboef at deviantart.com and the lightning bolt is from Free Brushes by Brusheezy.In my camera bag
I always have my Nikon D800 body, my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens, and my Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8. I also like to have my ExpoDisc with me in situations where I might come across mixed light sources. It gives me perfect white balance every time.Feedback
When you're planning on doing a fair bit of post-processing with brushes and the like, make sure you compose carefully to make sure you'll have the room to balance out all those elements in whatever editing software you use.
