Copy Stand/Tungsten Test

For this week’s assignment, we had to find two images from a magazine (one in which the lighting contributed to the overall mood of the photo, and one in which we wanted to know how exactly the lighting was done) and photograph them using the copy stand. We also had to ‘finish the roll’ (in film terms) of images–the catch being we had to keep the white balance set to Tungsten.

I tried shooting under several light situations (getting all the more annoyed because the Tungsten setting, well, works best when you have a tungsten light source…) before heading into the Heidelberg for some indoor photos. And–yay!–the lighting was good old-fashioned tungsten; no crazy flourescence for this bar. Long story short–this is my favorite image from the entire session. I’m partial to images of bars anyway, since my dad and brother were both bartenders, and I like the clarity (not quite present in the web image) and detail in the photo.

Bartender Jeramiah Soles straightens the counter area behind the bar of The Heidelberg restaurant in Columbia, MO. Soles has been working at The Heidelberg for ten years, though he became a mixologist only after five years as a cook. The job itself is “a little stressful,” he says.

The copy stand was a little more tricky than I’d thought it would be, probably because I am short and was standing on my tiptoes, straining leg muscles I didn’t know existed, while trying to make my copy of the full-page-spread seal photo. There’s a little bit of glare on the left side of the gutter (this story was towards the back of the magazine, making it difficult to flatten the entire page evenly…but there was probably a way to do this that I didn’t think of at the time. Grr), but color-wise, it came out great (I LOVE the bright red of the right seal’s yawn). I couldn’t figure out if any artificial lighting was used, so this is my ‘stump the chump’ select.

Photo (c) Yva Momatiuk and John Eastcott; National Geographic, 11/2008

My second copy stand image is from the same issue of National Geographic; specifically, from a story on a cave of giant crystals in Mexico. Particularly when compared to the images from INSIDE the cave (I’m including a copy stand shot of that, too, but I picked the darker photo for officially turning in because it seems more evocative), I think this photo does a great job of conveying the sense of traveling into a semi-alien world. There are a few dust specks from the glass that I didn’t notice when I was making the copies, but hopefully they don’t take too much away from the image itself. Anyway, here are both images- look at the size of the crystals! Crazy stuff.

Photos (c) Carsten Peter; National Geographic, 11/2008