Home Depot, my prop shop

My latest editorial article for Popular Photography & Imaging, the largest photography magazine in the world, involves scouting out props in Home Depot and taking pictures of them.

The article was just published in the November 2007 issue of Popular Photography magazine worldwide. I took a total of 6-12 images. There isn't enough room for all of them and hence, only a handful got published.

Here, I will take you behind the scenes and show you some images that was not published as well as, in one case, what the props really look like before they were lighted!

Before you venture further, please cllick on the images above and to the left to read the article. They will give you a fundamental basis of the story, which I will not get into here, in my blog. Well, what are we waiting for, let the fun begin!!!

The image of the tiled flower was shot in natural lighting, to showcase what the props look like.

The idea is to use only ONE light source to make the image stand out like no other.

The tiles are purchased from the tiles department and it has an imagery of the same flower shown. So, the match of the tile and flower is uncanny. I previsualized this image before scurrying away to craft it.

The image on the left, also taken in natural light doesn't seem to show off anything other than these highly expensive paint chips, available in the paint department. Ok, they are free and if you can get as many as you like but please do try to save some for the next Home Depot customer.

The beauty and secret of this shot is the idea of utilizing light to bounce off the white backing of these paint chips to create the glow you see in the image (click on the left image to see the final photograph). To top it off, the paint chip really had the name, "Fireglow".

This was possibly, one of my best shot of the day, and it took me all of 10 minutes to previsualize, prep, light and shoot! 8 minutes were spent prepping the chips.

The next two images are motion triggered. The image on the right, Spiraled Splash is a screw splashing into orange soda. My hands got all orangy looking after an hour of dipping into the soda. I can't believe I used to love drinking these and how my kidney must have worked overtime to cleanse the color out. Yuck!

Now, these splash images are the harder images to create as it's really by chance, despite having the advantage of an IR trigger. If you don't have an IR trigger, you'll most definitely be left frustrated.

And here's the cliche shot of strawberry splashing into milk. I ran through a nice case of strawberry before getting it the way I wanted. It was fun. My lens hood had a bad case of pox on it after the whole shoot was completed. Also, another set of PIA setups to shoot due to how random the images may turn out.

Last, but not least is the image below, also unpublished. I named it, Favourite Son. Yeah yea, it's the Royal British spelling of favorite. :)

- MS