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I'd like to understand how Peter Lippmann lit his noble rot series. The grapes are exposed but the light falls away towards the sides, to a very black background. Could anyone explain to me how he might have done this? He is such an incredible still life photographer.

scottbb
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Danielle
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2 Answers2

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That lighting is very easy to create... it's called "falloff," the rate at which the light intensity decays over distance.

To create a very fast falloff you just need to place the light source very close to the subject. Because it is closer it doesn't need as much power to illuminate the subject; and because there is less power being used the light doesn't travel as far (the scene fades to black more quickly).

Placing the light closer also causes the light to wrap more (softer), and using less power causes the highlights to become more translucent (less specular/strong/bright, color & detail shows through).

Because the subject is so small, it wouldn't require a very large light source/softbox either... probably not more than a couple foot in size placed about 1 ft away (just out of frame).

Steven Kersting
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    By "closer -> softer" do you mean that the same light source would become bigger in relation to the subject (and this is why it will be softer)? – K. Minkov Nov 16 '22 at 12:36
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    @K.Minkov, yes... basically. What happens when you move a diffused light source closer is that it is able to see/light around corners/edges, which fills in the shadows otherwise created, which makes the light softer/flatter. – Steven Kersting Nov 16 '22 at 14:13
  • But that doesn't happen if you move a point (bare bulb), fresnel, or (truly) parabolic light source closer; even though it does become relatively larger... Adding diffusion doesn't really make a light source larger. What it does is separate the light into a much larger number of light sources (a diffused/non-point source). – Steven Kersting Nov 16 '22 at 15:40
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As the previous user @steven kersting has explained, during photography and on the stage, very close lighting was used with not very strong lumens, and it is very likely that even the background can be manipulated at night or a black cover. But if you can't light the physical scene in this way, provided that the light shines on the grapes, you can enter the image in Lightroom Classic software after shooting and by creating a mask with soft edges that goes from the end of the grapes to the The outside and the background section will increase to 100%, use it and then select the masked layer and reduce the amount of shadows from the Develop section and in the General section to the end and then reduce the black color channel to the end and confirm. so that the final image is like the image you want.

Merlin
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