Small space, epic angles

I'm going to tell you something that I wish I'd known when I was first starting photography as a business: Doing business photography is where it's at! Weddings are always late hours on the weekends. Businesses work 9-5, M-F, and they don't cry when you send a bill. It's awesome. You can make photos for a living, and still have a life. I love it.

The best kind of business photography is for Universities, and I'm lucky enough now to work full-time for Utah State University. The work is diverse and varied and always interesting.

Take this photo, for instance. My task was to make new photos to talk about chemistry classes. We did several photos at the lab table mixing compounds, and that's fine. But the Professor said the next step was to distill one part from the rest under the fume hood. Normally, working at a fume hood is facing into the hood with your back to the room, and there's not really a good picture there. You can try and get to the side, but the glass interferes with the subject in their hands, and it's still not a great photo.

So I pulled out my Platypod eXtreme and Handle. Normally, I'd use a ball head with this setup, but I keep these two tools in my lighting kit for putting lights in interesting places. Instead of a ball head, I used the light-stand mount for my Godox AD200, which has a 1/4"-20 mount that fits in the Base of the Spider Holster mount on my camera. I've got a Lumix S5 MkII with a Sigma 20mm f/2 lens. This combination put the camera inside the hood at a great height to see the action. I balanced the color for the fume hood light and added a blue in the background with a Magmod XL reflector and gel on a Godox AD600 flash. The color helps the subjects stand out — and it's the school colors, so that's a bonus.

I use my Playtpod gear for environmental photography every week. I'll show you some more ideas another time.

Thanks Levi Sim! Check out more about Levi on Instagram and check out the USU Instagram.