I was recently commisioned to photograph some low key fine art images of a sculptured art installation at a local park in Greater Manchester. Each of the set of eight wooden sculptures, dotted around a nature trail, posed it’s own unique challenge due to the location. Some of the sculptures set out in the open, others hidden deep in the woodland or recessed into hedgerow.
The brief was fairly simple and had been discussed in the planning stages with all this in mind. The low key photography look had been suggested by me as a way to fully show the design and texture of the sculptures, without the distracting background of the Greater Manchester park in which the sculptures are installed. This would enable a quicker shoot, with much less equipment needed and help my client meet her budget for the project.
My gear for the shoot was rather on the basic side and consisted of:
Canon EOS 760d - APSC Camera from circa 2016
Canon 18-55mm lens - the non-IS kit lens shipped with Canons starter cameras, which I’ve had for well over a decade
One speedlight (off-camera flash) with wireless trigger
Godox AK-R1 kit - a small kit of easily transportable light modifiers View on Amazon
A magnetic round head flash adapter view on Amazon
Manfrotto travel tripod Updated version on Amazon
The style of photography required the reduction of the ambient light for each composition to zero. That required the following settings dialled into camera manually.
Aperture: f/16
Shutter: 1/160
ISO: 200
Now there’s a chance you may question why, if the aim was the complete reduction of light, would I set my ISO to 200 instead of 100 (the lowest for this camera model)? The answer to that lies in the planning. I know that one of these sculptures sits out in the open with direct light on it, I also know that another one of the sculptures sits in a very tight space where I would have to be fairly close to my subject.
With these two things in mind, I knew that f/16 dialled in for the aperture would achieve the required depth of field, even for the tight shot, whilst retaining the focal length of 55mm throughout. And setting myself at ISO 200 would allow me to reduce the exposure by half (down to ISO 100) when I reached the open field sculpture. All without the need to change any settings which may affect the look of the sculpture in the final image. Consistency amongst all eight images was key.
With my settings dialled into camera, all that was left was to manually expose the speed light. After a couple of test shots, I settled on 1/8 power. I also added my magnetic round head converter and green tint gel to the flash front (from the Godox AK-R1 kit), giving a slightly vintage look to the sculpture and reducing some of the orange and magenta colours in the wood. Lastly I set my white balance manually to 6000k (flash - the Canon 760d does not have a custom white balance mode) in camera and the picture profile to fine detail. Again aiding the consistency and reducing post production work.
And with that I was ready to shoot.
Each sculpture required something slightly different in terms of the light. Some were better lit from one side, some from over the top. As mentioned above, some of the sculptures were recessed into bushes and hedgerow. With these sculptures the challenge was with light spill. This is where my Godox AK-R1 kit came in handy. Having already attached the magnetic holder and green gel to the front of the speedlight unit, I was able to utilise the honeycomb modifier and snoot from the AK-R1 kit for the shots that required it, whilst keeping the green vintage tint in place. This really is a handy little kit for this type of work as the modifiers are stackable and magnetic, so are really simple to modify to achieve different looks.
I paid in full for all my photography gear listed here and the links contained are purely from a personal recommendation standpoint, but if you do want to check out this little box of tricks, then click here to find the Godox AK-R1 kit on Amazon and just to note, unless you have a Godox round head speedlight then you will need this reasonably priced magnetic round head converter to go alongside it Magnetic Round Head Converter
All in, the project including pre-shoot conversations and location scout, post-production and delivery, took a little less than half a day. Happy client, getting some fantastic images and coming in under budget, and happy photographer, delivering a well received commission with very little time and energy consumed. In fact it took me longer to produce the short video I created to document this project than it did to actually deliver the project! You can find that video here: Low Key Fine Art Commission with budget gear
any questions? drop a comment below