Lighting Setup to Shoot Still Life Photos
I am working on an art series of still life images. One advantage with having a large studio is being able to setup all the needed lights without being crowded. Below is a photo of my setup for this shoot. Five Profoto compact 600R flashes. Two are lighting up the white background. Nice not needing to play with seamless paper, although the floor is getting mucked up. But the floor is not important for these images. My large 3×4 soft box provides a smooth diffuse light to give the effect of natural light through a window. My smaller 2×2 is used to fill or back light the objects from overhead. Finally is the one flash with a long snoot. I used a Profoto snoot with a diffuser in the filter holder to make the light very uniform. I then attached a Profoto reflector to the end of the snoot with barn door filter holder. In the filter holder is a 5 degree honeycomb. This creates a very tight light for illuminating the object that also creates a natural vignette. I prefer a natural vignette instead of applying an artificial on with Photoshop. I prefer to get it right in the camera instead of applying a bunch of tricks with Photoshop.
Lighting setup for still life photo shoot