Today’s Project 365 shot is a skewer of shrimp and lemon wedges. I’m a big fan of shrimp but they have to be cooked perfectly. It’s so easy to overcook them and once they are overcooked they get hard and tough. I typically cook them until they just start to turn from translucent to a bit of color and then pull them off the heat. They will continue to cook a bit while off the heat and become just perfect.
The setup for this shot used a light box that I built out of sheets of foam core. You can see the setup shot below.
I used a standard fluorescent bulb that was attached to the right side of the light box with a clamp. Also on the right side and tucked inside the light box was a Canon 580EXII aimed at the back of the light box. To camera left I had a Canon 430EXII with a Lumiquest Softbox III.
I used a monkey wrench to hold the skewer in place. I was looking for my vice grips which I think would have worked better but I couldn’t find them so I improvised with the monkey wrench. I also used some Maximum PC magazines to life the subject up a bit. I could have used any magazines but these were within arms reach.
I prepared the shrimp and cut the lemons into wedges and placed them on the skewer. I used a Canon 5DII and a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/14. My shutter speed was 1/125th second.
When I pulled the final image into Photoshop I noticed that the background wasn’t perfectly white. This was probably because my lighting was uneven and the 580EXII didn’t blow the background out like I would have preferred. So I used Topaz Labs ReMask plug-in to create a mask of the skewer and then set the background fill to pure white. I saved the file off as a TIFF and another re-sized for the web.
If you have any comments on how this shot can be improved I would love to hear from you. I am also happy to answer any questions.
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