When Madison Magazine Art Director Tim Burton sent me Tom Linfield’s artist profile, my first thought was, “He paints what?”  Peppers, that’s right.  And he’s on his way to painting 100 of them.  Given Tom’s project is partially about quantity, I felt there was no better way to convey that then incorporating as much of his work as possible while keeping it fun.  The only request from the magazine was they wanted it to be in his studio.  Well, turns out some painters don’t need a lot of room to work.  The room was maybe as big as an oversized bathroom (MAYBE)  and just out of frame is Tom’s large work table (thankfully on wheels!!!).

The lighting in studio was florescence lights overhead and rather then letting the ambient creep into the shot, we simply lit the small space with 3 lights.  And as you can see in one of the paintings with a glass frame, the hanging fluorescence lights left an unwanted reflection anyway, so we unplugged most of them.  This was lit how we light most of our simple shots, a main in front with a softbox camera left with two rim lights.  The Rim lights really helped avoid the photo from looking flat.

The final images came out fairly clean and straight out of camera, there were about 10 photos that worked.  However, 2 photos just clicked and since I shot on a tripod, it made for an easy composite.  As you can see, the action of the pepper leaving Tom’s Hand made the photo where he was looking at the pepper that much better.  Using simple layer masks and soft blending brushes, I merged the photos together for the final image I would edit.

A couple tips on composites that we use:

1. Shoot on a tripod!
2. Merge the images before you do anything else.  This way, everything is edited the same thereafter.
3. Ensure your White balance, other color settings, contrast, etc. are the same in Camera Raw.
4. Try to pick areas where there is little pattern or not much going on to make your blends.  This will allow for a seamless transitions.
5. Use big soft brushes where you can.
6. If a blend isn’t perfect, try using the patch tool to smooth the transition.

The rest of the edit is pretty straight forward with basic sharpening, contrast & color adjustments.  Tom was a lot of fun to work with which is all a photographer can ever ask for when working with a client.  You can check his work out at www.tomlinfield.com.  This image appeared in the October 2009 Food & Wine issue for Madison.

More soon…

TVS.