I'm at home, working, today and wanted to take something quick to keep the momentum up. I'd seen a fantastic image of some stacked biscuits last night, posted by one of my contacts on flickr and became convinced that the same thing with potatoes would be both groovy and fulfil my need for speed.
Let me stop the train here and say that if you've never tried balancing potatoes, you should go and try it now... I'll still be here, but you need to have some empathy for the next bit.
Potatoes are near impossible to balance, it turns out. Maybe I should have realised that, I don't know, but it was a joke. Took a good twenty minutes to get these babies balanced, and there was no way I was going to mess it up by trying number four.
Sorry, this is about lighting, not potatoes - for the background I took a sheet of A3 card and cut a hole to slip my 360AFD flash through, with my old Sto-Fen diffuser on the front (it fits, score one for Jessops, the same head shape as my long-departed Vivitar flash). The flash was lying side-on with a pile of books to bring it to the right height to fit through the hole. Distance to potato, about 5cm (say 2"), I guess. The idea was to try and get a bit of a halo going on, though the white background has killed any rimlighting, I suppose. If you look closely, there is a bit of a colour difference around the 'taters to the further out background.
At head height, camera left (so above camera, I was shooting at table height) the 430EXII shooting into a silver umbrella, must have been all of one metre away. Both flashes set to 1/16th. All done while balancing potatoes. Well, to be honest I got the shot set up with one potato, then spent the time balancing the others with the cable release in my hand in case it worked.
End of story - for what is a pretty simple shot, it took an age to set up. I think I'm going to start shooting Lego next, it must be easier.
STACKING IS THE NEW BALANCING!
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