This was the second photograph in my “instruments” series of photographs, found at the same location as the previous but this time it is a small (about four inches square at the based) bronze statue. This is the kind of photograph we often see on eBay or in magazines, catalogues and on shopping website, and it is relatively simply to take given the correct equipment.
Firstly, I found a large sheet of white paper and got an assistant to hold the paper up at the back in a large arch. The weight of the statue held the paper in place, I didn’t use flash because of the reflective nature of the bronze material. The most vital piece of photographic kit I used here (apart from a camera, obviously) was my tripod. Using this I was able set the camera to a 1.3 second exposure time at an aperture setting of f8.0.
Taking this picture with a RAW setting on the camera meant that it didn’t matter if the light in the room gave the image a orange glow, because this White Balance setting was easily corrected in Lightroom by using the White Balance Selector tool. It made sense to me to make this still life study black and white and I feel that it benefits from this conversion.