Once again, quarantine time seems to be going faster than it certainly seems like it is. Here we are almost two weeks from my last hot pepper series quarantine photo. You know the score: this is a series inspired by Edward Weston’s bell pepper series and dedicated to my love of all things capsaicin.
This week, I went kind of the opposite of Hot Pepper No. 1 and used a white satin sheet for my backdrop. Lighting was mostly from my Paul C Buff Einstein E640 with a 32×40 soft box. This essentially became a fake window light because the relative size to the habñero is enormous. The softbox was at camera left and right next to the camera (literally touching the barrel of the lens). I added a tiny bit of spotlight at camera right with a Nikon SB-26 modified with a homemade gridspot. This was mostly to add the specular highlights at the top of the pepper but it also gave a little supplemental illumination to the stem.
Honestly, I don’t think I like it that much. This seems like something that would be used to illustrate a chapter in a cookbook on hot peppers and their uses. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not what I’m going for with this series. I want images that have some kind of emotion to them, not just illustrations. Additionally, while the gridded speedlight did give some specular light, it also took away a lot of detail in the top of the pepper. The red channel gets pretty hot there and there isn’t much in the way of shadow information to give a sense of shape.
Oh well, I still have 27 more to go before I get to Hot Pepper No. 30. Hopefully I can figure something interesting out before I get to it.
Previous series entries can be found here: