Thanks again for all of the encouragement.
How did you get your photos to look better than the knife itself?
The magic of photography.
But I'm odd, even for a photographer: I do product photography for fun, and have spent several years specializing in jewellery. A knife is tricky to light, but is a lot easier than a diamond ring.
Thanks for the rundown. I really need to work on getting better lighting for my pictures, that's what always trips me up.
You're very welcome. In case it isn't apparent, I enjoy being able to talk about this stuff, and my wife tuned me out years ago.
I don't want to over-sell myself or my abilities, though: the reality is that I took almost two hundred shots to produce these few, and most of them are obvious failures as I experimented with the lighting. And I also rarely go to these lengths for 'fun' photos. A lot of the time I'll just use a point-and-shoot camera and a flashlight; adding folded white paper or aluminum foil for reflectors can also make a big difference to a simple setup.
…I could go on. Happily, certainly, but also excessively. Perhaps I can split some of the discussion to a thread in the photography sub-forum.…
But first, more photos!
This one is only lightly edited. The difference is most noticeable in the blade; the first one I posted has a much stronger stone-wash texture, while this is more true-to-life. I often get a little carried away when I edit photos on the same day that I take them, and produce more natural images when I've taken some time to live with the results. I like this pose, but the photo with the knife balanced is more interesting, and having the light hitting the edge closer to the tip appeals to me more.
For this out-take I was using a different position for the flash that was throwing a narrow beam of light. Here it's behind the knife – you can see its angle from the shadow on the metal that's propping the knife up – which is causing the reflection on the background. I like that reflection, and the way the flash is outlining the tip provides a bit of separation between the knife and the background. But this really needed more light on the blade, particularly the cutting edge, to work. A knife without that little glint looks dead.
This last photo also has a different colour to it – more orange than blue, for a warmer look. You could call that a matter of artistic interpretation and stylistic expression, you could think that the rust is adding its colour to the reflections, or you could just assume that someone forgot to colour-correct it. I won't spoil the mystery by giving the correct answer away, but as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
