LightningPaul

An extremely old book I found yesterday. All the leaves are already untied. This book measures 38 x 24 x 10 cm. It weighs 5.1 kg and smells like mushrooms. I couldn't find any publishing date. The texts are in Dutch, French and Latin. Really amazing to see and to feel.

Of course, this image is excellent for the VFXY theme Books. Many other submissions are very good but made it harder to have something more original. I hope I succeeded with this one.


TECH-INFO: I wanted some edgy lighting to reveal texture but still preventing having ending up with some kind of low key image. Here I used three speedlight flashes. Two of them are gridded with the speed grids of Honl but you can make them yourself using black straws and lots of glue if you are handy. These flashes are placed in parallel with the left side of the book, almost looking at each other. The one at the left provides a kind of edge/back light. The other one, at the right, fills the side of the book at the right in the image. Because the light is so hard and very directional, thanks to the grids, you get a very contrasty look which enhances the texture of the sides of the bundle of pages. Another advantage of using girds is that you don't get any light into your lens.
The third flash back lits the top surface of the book. I used the Lumiquest Softbox III to soften the light more, still its pointed down. The reflected light goes to the camera. In many situations light is placed near the camera axis but I prefer to light from the opposite site if possible. It yields a very interesting look, especially for darker non-reflective materials, like the cover of this book.
I focused fairly close, around 25 cm. So my wide angle macro lens was needed here.

Normally I shoot JPG when using flashes but by coincidence I shot in RAW. In Adobe Camera Raw I pushed the clarity a lot. Contrast and vibrancy were slightly increased. In Photoshop I darkened the black sheet laying below the book because of the used lighting technique its texture got slightly enhanced too. Finally I added some vignetting.