I woke up really early this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up at 7:30! What’s going on? Is this what happens when you get past 50?

Anyway while pottering around (I think that’s what you call it) down stairs I decided to get my camera out and take a picture.  Santa brought us a new chess set for Christmas and it was sitting on the kitchen table all set up as Abi and I had been playing.  As a total side we both suck horribly and it’s more of a game of checkers than chess, to see who can grab the most pieces from each other – note to self, I really need to read a book on chess!

But I digress, the board was sitting on the table and I thought it might be interesting to shoot that.

So I got out the camera and a couple of lights and started to set up a scene to shoot.  Above the kitchen table we actually have a pretty big light and I started by just seeing what that looked like.  The board was nice and evenly lit, but it looked flat and boring, so that light went off and I tried the shot with one speed light.

Initially I had one light on the white pieces.  They looked good but the brown pieces on the other side of the board didn’t really stand out, so I added a small spot on them too.

Once I had the lighting I liked, I then began the process of finding a nice composition.  I took around 100 shots in total and the one below was my favorite.  I noticed in this image that the white pieces reflected a little in the table so I emphasized that a little in post processing.

Anyway, this is the final shot, and shows what you can do if you get up too early on a day off