Once More with Feeling

In the last post, I showed an image of my Ibanez Artcore electric guitar.  The post was all tongue-in-cheeky. But after discovering a serious error in the image and some aesthetic consideration I decided a more serious do-over was in order.

I made the original image on a lark.  The guitar had been sitting forever on its stand gathering dust.  On occasion I would look at it and think to myself that I'd like to make a photograph of it some day.  I get this thought often (not just about the guitar) but last week decided to act on my impulse and make a picture.  I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like -- something dark with a hint of ethereal.  The model in my head was the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey -- basically something spacey and backlit.  So the lighting was solved and I moved on to the business of making of the picture.  I'll leave the details out, but here's the setup and the original:

The main reason for the redo is because I missed something very important.  I missed it when I set up the image.  I missed it when I shot the image.  I missed it when I processed the image.  I missed it when I posted the image.  What I missed was a piece of foam insulation underneath the bridge that had been there since I bought the guitar five years ago.  I had put this image online not only on my Flickr stream but on my professional portfolio site.  D'oh!

The secondary reason for the redo is that after some time spent reconsidering the image, I decided I wanted the chrome pieces and the white parts to pop.  Basically I wanted them to stand out with a certain amount of crispness and forward presence.  In order to do this I would have to make a separate exposure for each of the major components.  I won't post the component pieces of the composite whole, but I'll describe them below.

1st exposure -- this exposure is the same as the original. I wanted the same side lighting with no specular reflections on the body itself.  I wanted that warm, rich color to come through and be the central draw of the image.

2nd exposure -- this was for the bottom chrome piece.  I put a medium softbox on the floor in order to get a specular reflection on the chrome.

3rd exposure -- this one was the most difficult due to the fact that the pickups were parallel to the lens/image plane.  The ideal place for a light was right in front of the lens which kind of defeats the purpose of photographing the guitar.  To overcome this, I put a 39"x72" translucent panel in front of the camera, but pulled the fabric from the frame just enough to slip the lens between them thus making a "hole" in my panel.  I placed a strobe behind the camera/tripod and basically shot through the panel.  This did the job.

Here's the final composite image:

I'm sure there's some kind of moral to be taken away from this story.  It probably has something to do with paying attention to detail and taking the time to make the best image the first time.  Sometimes that's not possible for whatever reason.  However, this was on my dime so I had the time to shoot it again.  I had the technology.  Now I have a photo that I'm extremely proud of having made.  In fact this lark of a photo (in spite of the ensuing do-over) is probably one of the most favorite of my images.  I rarely create "beautiful" images, but this one is definitely beautiful (IMHO).