Nice Pictures.. But How???!!!

[Derrel]

Lighting looks quite simple--a medium size range softbox looks like the main light, then lots of Photoshop tweaking was done. I don't think the lighting in any of the shots is very sophisticated; the majority of these shots were made possible by pixel-pushing.

 

[rufus5150]

I've done some still life work recently. You have to have quality light and pretty deep DOF. I've made it work with narrow DOF once or twice but not particularly pleased with the results.

The light is usually fairly simple. One light usually is sufficient with a reflector or two. Shaping it is the harder part. You want to make sure that the subject is highlighted and the edges are darker. I've started experimenting with two lights where one (large) light source illuminates the whole scene and a second, more constrained light will provide the light shaping in the scene. You can shape the light somewhat in post.

Processing generally revolves around a massive boost in midtone contrast but because you end up dealing with drastic contrasts in tones, you have to be careful to avoid halos. 3rd party filters such as LucisArts and TopazAdjust can really help. I'm not generally into very heavy editing with images, but my still life images tend to have 20 or 30 layers of things done to individual bits of the image.

I've also incorporated overlay textures to do what I want. The linked images don't seem to use those, though.

Take a good long look at the dutch still life painters for inspiration. See how they use light within the frame to shape the overall image then try to mimic it. Also, flickr has a number of groups dedicated to still life, some better than others, but worth a browse.

Here are a few of mine:

 

[KmH]

Nice work! :thumbup:

 

[vtf]

^^^^they look like paintings, excellent.