Instagram Post of The Month - May
The post of the month for May is none other than the May the Fourth post, highlighting some early 2000s Star Wars playing cards. This post was just a personal project, since I post every year on May the Fourth, being the massive Star Wars fan that I am. I am really happy with how the photo turned out, and I’ll take any excuse to talk to a captive audience about my random passions. So let me give you a bit of the backstory before I break down how I shot this.
Despite not being old enough to have known the impact of the original Star Wars trilogy, I was born in the late ‘90s and was hit full force by the release of the Prequels, as you can see young James reading the Phantom Mence in his highchair. Yes, people have their opinions on these movies, but as a child these rocked my world and my earliest memories are of playing with Star Wars action figures, and sadly losing Jango Fett’s head during a Christmas service (Ironic, isn’t it). To get to the point, I’m a huge nerd and unapologetic about, so every year I post on May the Fourth. This year I decided to show off a collection of playing cards released along with Attack of The Clones in 2002, that I had stored away with my other card collections. This set shows off well as it has a striking logo on the back and clear, iconic images from the movie on the front of each card. As you can see in the photo, I picked a few of my favourites to feature face-up as some little Easter Eggs, along with a lightsaber hilt as a highlight in the bottom corner as an additional piece of lore.
This photo was shot on the trusty Nikon Z7, with a Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens. Despite not being a macro lens, I have found that this lens has an impressive focus range and has quickly become one of my favourite lenses. This was shot overhead at 66mm to get tight framing and also create some depth of field out of a relatively flat setup. To create more depth, this was taken fully open at f2.8, and I even put some transparent plastic wrap around the edges of the lens to further distort the edges of the frame, creating a mystical haze. This image was lit using an Aputure MT Pro, placed in the top right corner above the cards, and a reflector parallel to the cards to fill in the shadows and highlight the side of the deck.
Overall, I’m very happy with the outcome of the shoot and I am always glad to be able to talk about the things I love, this blog just happens to contain the big two! As always, I hope this brought some insight into how creative product photography works and got some backstory into the crazy man behind the lens. May the Force Be With You.