Recently, I’ve been a little obsessed about stock photography. I’ve been spurred on by websites like istockphoto, where your photos can be bought by designers to incorporate into their creations.

I’m a big fan of isolated on white pictures, like the eggplant photo I took above. Once you get the proper lighting, the isolation isn’t too difficult. The key is to totally drown the background (I use a poster board) with as much light as possible, while keeping the object under normal lighting. This totally saturates the background when capturing the image while keeping the object at a decent light level. This results in those clean looking images you see in the magazines, movies, and commercials. I’m still using my two megapixel dinosaur of a camera to take this, so it really doesn’t take expensive equipment. Currently, I have two light sources, but will hopefully make myself a soft box sometime.

There’s just something about capturing the essence of an object all alone at a gratifyingly minimalistic state. You can check out my current gallery of works. It’s still rather meager compared to the “real” photographers who are members of the site. For now, I plan on just working on honing my basic photography skills. Then, I’ll hopefully upgrade to better equipment. The good thing about istockphoto is that they have actual experts look at every single one of your photos to check and make sure they are up to a certain standard before letting it into the library. They’ve given me really good advice about technique, and take the time to really critique my photos. It’s really a great resource.

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