Back in April of this year there was a special event—a solar eclipse. It was apparently a special one due to the fact that totality would last twice as long as previous solar eclipses—or so I read. I’m no eclipse-chaser or astronomer so this post isn’t about the specifics about the 2024 solar eclipse. Any details you were hoping to glean from it (or of solar power because of the title) are not here. Sorry to disappoint. This entry is about a little photo shoot I did for NiSi Optics USA to help promote their solar specific ND (Neutral Density) filters. It was a very simple and basic setup.
The hardest part was depicting the idea of a solar specific ND filter—I mean it’s a dark piece of glass encased in an aluminum frame that has the name and description—but I think I nailed it if I do say so myself. The idea popped into my head after some considerable time just staring at the product asking myself “how? How do I convey that this is a filter specifically meant for shooting the sun?”
I thought; It’s round. The sun is round. Direct sun gives harsh shadows. The eclipse is dark. ding! The idea is born. Now it’s time to execute. I decided to photograph the filter at an angle with direct harsh light with zero modifiers to create the defined shadow and the shadow itself would represent the totality of the eclipse. It was perfect (and a bit clever I think).
I set out to arrange the pieces but quickly found out that propping up the filter in position was a little more difficult (more irritating than difficult actually). I landed on using a grip stud to prop it in place. This of course would require some Photoshop magic to remove the stud so that the filter appears to be floating or leaning against nothing.
As for the background I decided on a darker mustard yellow. I perhaps should have changed it to the company color but alas I did not. The background itself was a rather expensive card-stock paper I got from Staples. Once I propped the filter I moved the light around to find the perfect angle that would give the shadow the right shape. I played with long shadows, short shadows, etc. I was also mindful of not creating a huge reflection of light in the aluminum frame that would be distracting but also block the information etched into the frame. The last image on the carousel below shows another idea I played with that I feel really married the idea of the sun and moon coming together but in the end decided against it simply because it did not display the name of the brand nor the description around the frame.
It wasn’t a very difficult setup as you can see but more than half the battle is coming up with a good idea. As I mentioned at the outset I’m rather happy with the way it all turned out and I feel it gets the point across and once you add the marketing graphical elements it all comes together perfectly.
Once the photo side of things was done I took that same idea and shot a quick little video for an instagram story and reel. I propped the filter differently to avoid having to do any rotoscope masking as that would have been extremely tedious to do.
If you got this far thanks for reading and I hope you gleaned some interesting tidbits from this simple project!