Tabletop Photography

I always admire the beautiful tabletop photography in the "shelter" magazines.  It's not just the pretty dishes, silverware, linens and floral arrangements that catch my eye.  Props, styling and lighting come together to create a mood and tell a story. 

This morning, I spent a while admiring the simple tea service photograph above, from the November/December Victoria Magazine.  As I sat there, sipping my own tea, I decided to try to recreate the photo.

Obviously, I wasn't trying to create exact replicas of the original.  Here's my first version. I am pretty pleased with the results, but I forgot to refill the teacup for this shot! 

And my second version. 

I definitely want to try this again with other inspiration photos.  I think analyzing a photo from a magazine teaches me something about styling, but actually setting up a photo shoot and taking my own knock-offs teaches me even more. 

I can see how my lighting (window light) is so different from the original.  The soft side lighting in the original implies something more soft and intimate than my front-on, strong window lighting.

And when I got my dishes out and tried it myself, I saw the angle of the camera in relation to the full teacup, something I hadn't noticed while passively looking at the photo.  The full teacup tells part of the story -- that this is a tea service in active use, not a service on display on a sideboard.