My First Magazine Cover!

Last month's Radish Magazine featured an article on violet jelly, written by Maggie, and included two of my photographs - including the cover! Very pleased :)

Glass

A little more experimenting with dark field lighting of glass. Greatly inspired by Light, Science and Magic - one of my favourite technical photography books.

I will post a setup shot for this image on my Flickr page.

It's Beginning To Smell A Lot Like Christmas...

...with Prairieland Herbs' December Soap of the Month, Celebration, from Biscuit's Boutique in Des Moines. This beautiful handmade soap is scented with spruce, fir and frankincense, and is only available while stocks last.

I had great fun making this picture - there's an annotated setup shot on my Flickr page.

Soap Shoot

Doing some product shots for Prairieland Herbs. Here is this month's Soap of the Month (a little late, but better than never!) - Refreshing Rosemary from Biscuit's Boutique. This has a bright, fresh scent that's just the thing to get you up and going now that the mornings are getting darker.

This shot was lit with a single LED flashlight clamped in a retort stand camera right...

...and this was a more conventional lighting setup, using three Nikon SB Strobes.

Day 15

Popular Prairieland products produce pleasant patterns....

Day 10

It was a very quiet Sample Sunday at Prairieland Herbs today. We got to pack all our orders, make, package, and label lots more goodies for stock. We did have a few intrepid customers too, though :)

Today's picture is of Maggie's amazing salt and sugar scrubs - if you haven't tried these, you are really missing out!

Spicy Spray

Another product shot for the Prairieland Herbs website, this time a seasonal special, Spicy Spray. I had lots of fun making this shot, and did loads of experiments with lighting. There is a setup shot on my Flickr page.

It's Back!!!

The Good Stuff has returned! Now I can treat my cold properly!

(It's really really hard to photograph this, you just want to take the bottle and drink it!)

More PLH Product Pics

I'm still working away in the studio, doing pictures of Prairieland Herbs products for their website. I'm having fun playing with these, especially with lighting - I have used small strobes, a big monoflash, cheap clamp-on worklights, and window light in various combinations. I modify the light using (mainly homebrew) reflectors, diffusers, flags, gels, etc., to achieve different effects. I try to get decent results in camera, and Photoshop as little as possible. Here's some of what I've been doing recently:

Soap Portrait

My latest job is to photograph a bar of soap for the Prairieland Herbs website. Without the box and label, it's a bit more challenging to make a bar of soap look interesting. Here's what I did:

And here's how I did it:

There are detailed notes on this picture on my Flickr page.

Cards

My first greeting cards ready to go on sale at Prairieland Herbs

MJ's Marvels

Here are some more pictures I made for Maggie's sister's Etsy shop - mjsgoodies.etsy.com - this time really cute handmade felt hats, neck warmers and scarves. (These pictures don't show it, but the scarves have pockets in them to keep your hands warm too!)

Sweet Goodies

Maggie's sister has been making these wonderful, unusual, and delicious goodies to sell in her Etsy store for Valentine's Day. I think they're really cute!

In a spin

Here is my biggest "real" spinning project to date:
12 ozs "smoke" roving from High Prairie Fibers (80% Suffolk, 20% Mohair) + about 30 hours' work = 1379 yards of 2-ply yarn :)

PLH Product shots

Hair Vinegar. This one I did before I got my D200 - I used a little Fuji Finepix F10. It was always intended as a "draft" picture. The "real" one will have glass bottles with the new labels. Post production was done in Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 - I can't afford Photoshop.


Lip Balms. One of the new label shots. They're not all quite so artsy, but I like to play.
Both of these were done with my old hot lights. I'm looking forward to getting strobes up and running properly.

Cool squash

Displaying one of Maggie's hand-knit hats for her Etsy store.
(I've done most of the pics there) I used hot lights for this one. 1/20 @ f/5.6