Her Favorite Socks

Today's capture was a fun one to shoot. What you are looking at is my youngest daughter's favorite pair of socks.

To create this shot, I had Sarah stand on a seamless roll of white backdrop paper with her pant legs rolled up. To isolate her feet against the white background, I lit the scene with three lights.

First, I placed a softbox as the main light directly above the camera. This served to provide even lighting to bring out the color of the socks while creating a slight shadow below the feet. I then placed a light (diffused with a white umbrella) on each side of the subject feet. These lights were aimed at the backdrop behind the feet. This worked to completely overexpose the background creating the pure white.

In post-processing I bumped the brightness a bit using a 'LEVELS' adjustment layer in Photoshop to ensure the background was completely white. Finally, to remove the legs I simply painted over them with a white brush, leaving just the socks.

I like how the socks (with Sarah's feet still in them) take on a strange appearance when her legs are removed. It's almost a bit creepy.

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens - 1/60 second, f/10, ISO 100