Could you tell me more about your light tent and why these were shot without it?
Many of the knife photographs you see where taken using some form of a technique known as a "light tent". You can make a classic light tent by building a tee-pee like structure. The walls are made of a translucent material. You can buy special material just for this purpose. Many people report fine results using an ordinary white bed sheet though a bed sheet will require stronger lights since only a small fraction of the light will get through. The lights need to be color-correct for the film you are using.
The object to be photographed goes on the floor of the tee-pee. The camera looks down through the top. Three to five lights are then arrayed around on the outside. This creates diffused, non-directional light inside and, since the walls inside are white, any reflections will just be pure white. The only things to watch out for is reflection of the tent structure or of the camera lens.
A light tent works fine, but it is very, very limiting. You can only take two-dimensional pictures of an object laying flat. And, you can only take pictures with perfectly even illumination. After a while, light tent pictures tend to all look alike, IMHO.
In the movie, A River Runs Through It, The Reverend Maclean teaches his two sons fly fishing saying, "casting is an art that is practiced on a three-count rhythm between ten o'clock and two o'clock." He drills his sons with a metronome to develope a very consistent cast. Each cast must be exactly like the same. One start with the pole at the ten o'clock position. On the first beat, one thrusts the pole forward to the two o'clock position but does not release the line. This established the direction you'll cast in. On the second beat, one returns to ten o'clock. And, on the third beat, one casts forward to the two o'clock position releasing the line as you go. This puts the power in the cast. With practice, one can get good distance and good direction using this technique.
Later on in the film the two boys separate. The younger heads off to college in the east where he goes for several years without fishing. The older stays in Montana and continues fly fishing as much as possible. When the younger finally returns, the two, of couse, go fishing. It doesn't take the younger but a few tries to return to the drilled technique his father taught him, the three -count rhythm between ten and two o'clock. But then he looks over and sees his brother casting. He has broken loose of his father's structures and developed a wonderful, artistic technique all his own!
Some people think that knife photography is an art practiced on a three-count rhythm between ten and two o'clock. On the first count, you place the knife flat in the light tent with the tip either at ten or two o'clock. On the second count, you center the knife in the viewfinder and focus exactly on it. And, on the third count, you expose the picture. One, two, three... One, two, three... One, two, three... and the pictures, while very nice, all start to look the same.
I want to break free of the three-count rhythm. We live in three-dimensions. Why do our knives seem to live only in two? I want pictures with depth and height. I want shadows. I want reflections. I want a wonderful, artistic technique all my own! That means breaking free of the light tent.
This picture is taken at a rather extreme angle so that the knives seem to disappear into the background -- depth. And, the illumination is uneven. The knives are sitting in a pool of light in the middle of the frame with darkness in the back and on the sides. There are shadows and reflections.
This sort of picture simply can't be done in a light tent.
You can see some of my first published attempts to break free of the light tent by
clicking here.
Do the reflective surfaces represent artistic efforts or technical challenges?
Both. But is there a difference between the two?
