Oct 4, 2009 View Comments
This is what you get when you want to play around with a new snoot you made out of an old cereal box. You can build a decent snoot out of a lucky charms box and some duct tape. I’ll be posting soon about making snoots out of that foam paper from the craft store.
Strobist info: Vivitar 285 with homemade snoot camera left at 1/2 power. I had the lightstand as high as it would go, probably 7 feet high pointed almost straight down.
Jul 7, 2009 View Comments
I decided to make some red velvet cupcakes for a small July 4th family cookout. This is the third time I’ve made these things and I must say, they are delicious. I wanted to take a picture of one in my homemade macro box before we left but I just didn’t have time. I was a little concerned about bringing all of them because I was afraid there would be none left to bring home. Fast forward a few hours and we arrived back home safe and sound with 5 leftover cupcakes. Time to make pictures. Here’s the recipe:
I’m a rank amateur when it comes to food photography but if it can fit into my homemade diy cardboard macro box, its so easy, you can’t mess it up. I positioned the cupcake to get the best looking side towards the camera. My 580exII flash was setup on a lightstand pointing almost straight down on top of the box, shooting through a sheet of white tissue paper. Here’s what the overview of the shot looks like:
Camera setup: I had my “nifty fifty” 50mm 1.8 lens set at f10, ISO 100, firing at 1/200th of a second shutter speed. The flash was at 1/16th power and I used Pocket Wizards to trigger the flash.
I played around with the aperture a little bit and even placed a sheet of paper in front of the cupcake at one point as a reflector but there’s just nowhere inside that box that light can’t get to so it didn’t really improve the shot that much. It was a little too easy.
Jun 26, 2009 View Comments
Here’s my take on the Strobist blog post Food Photography Made Easy: The Lunch Box. I was trying to imitate the shot as much as possible, but my attempt just seemed to fall short. Possibly because I didn’t make the Lunch Box, I just used a Stofen on my flash. I have an Apollo softbox I could have used but I was being lazy. 
Here’s the setup. I put the tomatoes down on a white poster board and set my light stand up so it was almost directly on top. I had my 580EX II dialed down to 1/128th power with a Stofen omnibounce attached. Here’s a shot of the setup:
I ended up turning off the houselights because so I wouldn’t have to worry about any ambient light contamination. I used a flashlight to focus and took the shot. I liked this angle a little better. At least its different than Hobby’s. I started playing around a bit with the location of the flash and came up with this angle. I call it Tomato Noir: 
Anyway, here’s a bit more strobist info: The camera was a Digital Rebel XT. Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L series lens at f2.8. ISO 200. 1/250th second shutter speed. Pure flash. Canon 580EX II flash at 1/128th power with a Stofen Omnibounce on a Bogen lightstand.
