Paint Sculptures: Thin Depth of Field Setup and Test

When I was looking at Linden Gledhill's photos of paint sculptures he did for Canon on flickr I noticed another series that he did for ManvsMachine design and motion studios who were making a rebrand for BTVison.


MvsM / BT Vision Rebrand from ManvsMachine on Vimeo.

In the video the paint sculptures come out of triangles, I would like to have a play and see how it looks if I did something similar with my stills.

These are some of Linden Gledhill's photos.

I really like the feel that the light blue background gives the photos.  The lens is focused to the very front of the paint drops before the photos are taken.

This is the setup I quickly put together to try this.  I got a white piece of paper and wrapped it around the speaker and clamped it to some boxes.  I used two flashes on the right hand side, one was directly aimed at the paint and also lit the background, the other was on a 90 degree angle to the camera and is hitting the very front of the paint sculpture for emphasis and to create shadow, but also reflecting off the white paper around the paint for fill light.

Most of the images came out similar to this one, excessively blurred and messy looking.

Some were a little better though.  Next time I try this I will try a subtly coloured background and focusing a couple of millimeters in front of the paint to ensure that I capture the areas that are in focus.