Day 59 – Trinkets from Afar

A few years back, we went to Australia and visited Sydney, Uluru (the Outback), and the Cairns area of North Queensland. We always try and bring back things to remember our travels, and this is one of my favorites – a vase made from the wild cherry wood found in the region. We bought this in the Daintree Timber Gallery in the little town of Daintree. They make all their items in a similar finish; incorporating the rough exterior along with the highly polished inner wood. What I remember most about this place is all the crocodiles and bats we saw on our river tour, and how good a Kangaroo burger was (not kidding – it was delicious).

Since it’s sort of a plain picture, I did some work with lighting to bring it alive. I used two light sources:

430EX in small photoflex softbox, camera right (3 o’clock position) at 1/2 power
540EZ at camera left (8 o’clock position), zoomed to 105mm at 1/8 power

To get the light to fall off to the left of the frame, I shot at an angle to the wall instead of straight on, probably pointing toward the 11 o’clock position (so, the right side of the camera is slightly closer to the wall than the left).