Out-of-camera, stacked image.

This was the simplest setup possible I’ve used recently. I used 1 strobe mounted with a 30°grid. The object was shot laying flat on the shooting table sitting on white foamcore. Behind the object, I had a 20”x30” white foamcore at a slight angle held by a clamp. The strobe was pointing towards the center (this is where the work goes, placing the light to get a nice gradient on the object). You might have to play a little to get the light to shimmer nicely on your object. It will come with experience (and more play).

To the immediate left of the object and camera, was a 18”x20” black foamcore. This added some black delineation to the object by bouncing back some black. Finally, at the front of the object, was a small 4”x8” piece of silver card that filled in the shadows on the hinge of the little makeup box.

When I shot the image, I first shot without any water droplets to get the right shimmer across the gold cover. Once satisfied, I spritzed some water with a bottle. On a real shoot, the droplets would be critical, and most often several dozen images are made with various droplet configurations and selected by the art director and client. For my demo/blog purpose, this was adequate.

I used focus-stacking comprising of 4 shots exporting to tiff. Color, contrast, and other tweaks were done in Photoshop.

The actual ad for Yves St-Laurent was photographed using 2 light sources reflecting on a card. You can see the 2 sources by looking at the droplets. This brief tutorial was to give you some insights for you to try at your own studio. The sky’s the limit! Stop surfing and go shoot!