Side-lighting a Country Morning (Be Still 52 #5)

Side lighting with white reflector

This week's lesson in the Be Still 52 still life photography class is about different types of side-lighting. I set up a a still life I call "Country Morning" featuring meyer lemons from our tree, a few eggs from our backyard hens, an old ceramic rooster and birdhouse I keep in the kitchen. I hung a tablecloth on the wall for a backdrop and used a small wooden table as the base. The light is coming in from the right through a west facing glass door. I then experimented with a variety of different types of lighting. My favorite result is up top, side lighting with a white reflector. For all these, I cropped them but did no corrections. 

Basic side lighting

Side lighting with black reflector

Side lighting with silver reflector

Diffuse lighting with white reflector

The differences in lighting are not that dramatic, but I do like the effects of using my reflectors and this is a good reminder to pull them out and use them more often. You can see the effects a bit more if you click on the photographs to enlarge the images. Tomorrow, I'm going to post a new version of Country Morning, where I did some post-production work to get the image to where I really like it.