Creating a Wedding Ring, Bible, Love Verse and Heart Shadow Photograph

While this image was created to illustrate one of the unique capabilities of the lens being used, I thought I'd share the process behind creating the wedding ring, Bible, love verse and heart shadow photograph.
 
Obviously, to create an image similar to this, you need a ring and a book. Most large books and round rings can be used, but a wedding ring is the most common type of ring photographed and the Bible then becomes a very appropriate book for holding the ring. Note that if the ring is not round, creating a heart-shaped shadow immediately becomes more difficult, if not impossible. The heart-shaped shadow is not required, but ... it too is very appropriate for a wedding ring photo.
 
Love is the strong theme we are building on here and 1 Corinthians 13:4 is a favorite verse for this theme. While all Bibles will have this verse in them, not all Bibles will have this verse in an appropriate position on the page.
 
Getting the ring to stand up without a form of adhesive is another challenge. Doing so is easiest with some curl toward the inside of the pages, supporting the ring higher on its sides. The amount of curl also influences the heart shadow's shape.
 
This verse is closer to the end of the Bible than the beginning, meaning that there are more pages to the left than the right, creating unbalance. This makes creating the curves needed for the ring to sit in the pages somewhat more challenging, a challenge I met with a pair of A-clamps. My ill-designed-for-photography clamp jaws were red and required some black gaffer tape to eliminate the red showing in reflections on the ring. Reflections such as this are easy to miss when photographing, so be sure to check images of reflective subjects carefully.
 
Creating a shadow with an obvious shape requires hard light. This means the light source must be small in size relative to the source of the shadow. The smaller and farther away the light source is, the harder the shadow will become.
 
The right angle of the back-lighting is necessary to create the heart-shaped shadow in front of the ring. Aligning the flash with the crease between the pages will create a symmetric-shaped heart (if the pages are equally curved). The higher the flash, the shorter the heart. Figure out what works best for your composition.
 
Try handholding the flash and moving it around until you see the results you want. If using E-TTL and the camera's self-timer, the pre-flash will give you a preview of the shadow and give you a moment to adjust it prior to the picture being taken. Simply test-firing the flash will also help accomplish this task. Once you know where you want the flash positioned, fix it in place.
 
There are a million methods of holding a flash in place. I happened to have a lens box the right height at my immediate disposal and ... I simply used it. The box was not an especially secure option, so I had to be careful.
 
I wanted a hard shadow, but I didn't want the image to appear harshly lit. Since my working space was tight, I went high-tech with white copier/printer paper reflectors. I gaffer-taped one piece under the lens and another over the flash. Because rings are reflective, the paper reflectors were especially helpful in illuminating the front of it.
 
Bibles have a lot of pages and the pages are usually made thin for a compact and light overall book size and weight. Thin pages can become somewhat transparent and other print may bleed through the page being photographed. You can put a white paper under the pages, but that does not keep the print on the reverse side of the page being photographed from showing and this strategy potentially increases emphasis on that print. Find a Bible with thicker pages if you feel this issue is negatively impacting your results. The light bleed-through I encountered did not bother me.
 
I was reviewing the Canon TS-E 90mm f/2.8L Tilt-Shift Lens, a superb product photography lens, and was looking for an interesting subject. Especially with its macro capability combined with the tilt movement, this lens can draw a viewer's eye to the intended subject and to illustrate this ability, the ring image concept shared here worked perfectly. Tilting the lens fully upward (10°) permitted the camera to be used at a relatively high position while creating a shallow slice of in-focus area that nicely encompasses the ring and its heart shadow along with the verse intended to be emphasized.
 
When one views this image, their eye is instantly drawn to the in-focus subjects.
 
Here is the setup:
 

 
The Canon wireless flash system made this lighting setup very easy. Hopefully you "love" the result!

While I didn't create this image with the WPPI show in mind, the timing seems appropriate.

A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.