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Home โ†’ Miscellaneous

Attempting Realistic Tabletop Landscape Photography

By Spencer Cox 31 Comments
Last Updated On September 15, 2020

This is one of the more unusual videos I’ve made so far, but I might just be happier with it than any other I’ve done. My goal was pretty simple: to take a realistic “landscape” photo on my kitchen table.

I almost never do studio photography, or even much photography indoors at all. So this was definitely outside of my wheelhouse, even though it still has the landscape element to it:

Let me know what you think, and if you’d like to see more challenge type videos like this one! On the face of things, it’s not as educational as our other videos so far, but I do think there are some important takeaways here. Any time you’re trying a new genre of photography, attention to detail will take you a long way, as will a willingness to scrap any ideas that aren’t quite working right (regardless of the time you’ve invested in them). Also, don’t cheap out on your picture frames :)

If you have any thoughts or comments, feel free to let me know here, or below the video on YouTube.

And if you enjoyed this video and want to subscribe to our YouTube channel, you can do so here.

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Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Landscape Photography, Studio Photography, Video

About Spencer Cox

I'm Spencer Cox, a landscape photographer based in Colorado. I started writing for Photography Life a decade ago, and now I run the website in collaboration with Nasim. I've used nearly every digital camera system under the sun, but for my personal work, I love the slow-paced nature of large format film. You can see more at my personal website and my not-exactly-active Instagram page.

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31 Comments
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jim thompson
jim thompson
November 30, 2022 8:45 pm

thumbs up………

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Milan Sopata
Milan Sopata
February 18, 2020 1:00 pm

I’ve created the account to write – Thumbs up! :-) Seriously, your work is so inspirative. I’m reading and watching all articles

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alan green
alan green
February 5, 2020 6:46 am

Thumbs up!

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John Hinton
John Hinton
February 4, 2020 3:03 pm

Thumbs up for sure
Wondering what your total time to completion was?

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Allan Hewitt
Allan Hewitt
February 4, 2020 10:12 am

๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘….Excellent work Spencer

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Rosanna
Rosanna
February 4, 2020 7:36 am

Absolutely enjoyed this and yes, thumbs up too. My favorite part was the idea of poking holes in black posterboard for the night sky. Thank you for sharing your creativity.

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David Hallberg
David Hallberg
February 4, 2020 7:06 am

Well done Spencer. I actually liked the reflection in the unedited version. It seemed to be a shine off of some ice. The final version does deserve a thumbs up, but so does the unedited version. Very creative and enjoyable to view.

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Paolo
Paolo
February 4, 2020 3:36 am

Great work. I like your tutorials very much. Very instructive; using a real camera ;)

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Thomas Schytt
Thomas Schytt
February 4, 2020 3:30 am

Thumps up. Super cool.

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Linda A Perdue
Linda A Perdue
February 3, 2020 5:47 pm

Wow, love how you took the time to build your set and show us how you modified it along the way to make it look more real – I think you did succeed! The thought process of doing a night photo was great.

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Spencer Cox
Spencer Cox
Author
Reply to  Linda A Perdue
February 3, 2020 8:27 pm

Thank you, Linda! Yeah, I realized near the beginning that no matter what I did, there would always be something that “didn’t quite look right”… capturing a dark, nighttime photo doesn’t completely eliminate that problem, but I do think it makes it easier to get the illusion of reality.

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