Guido Mocafico There are many aspects about Mocaficos work that is influential towards mine.

This comes from the way that he frames and lights shots under controlled lighting. One of the main reasons why I really like his work is because of how he uses studio lighting to make normal objects look dramatic. He does this through carefully setting up his lights to create high contrast images. This picture in particular appears to be lit with a single light from a higher angle. This is made more obvious by the hotspots in the glass and jug. In my opinion this really brings out the textures in the items on the table. You can see the hard shadows created from this effect. I particularly like the shadows formed over the apples. He keeps a similar theme of lighting objects to create a dark, moody picture. However as there are more reflective objects in this picture, you can see that he has used a light and bounced it off the backdrop, making sure that he flags the light from the objects so that the light is bounced from behind the items. I also think that he has used a reflector to bounce back the light off of the backdrop to illuminate the front of each item. I think that this is really effective way to light reflective objects as it creates a subtle reflection. This technique also minimises the hot spots and avoids other reflections of the studio and the photographer being seen in the subjects.

The main reason why I picked to look at Guido Mocafico is because his use of lighting I believe will be useful for my photos as I want to shoot multiple items and cast an even lighting over the photos. I also feel that it would be good to use some of his lighting setups on my own work to create a broad range of tonality to my final images. His soft lighting on this photograph in particular creates a very realistic look of a painting. The antique style that he adopts of his subject matter lends the work an air of age and sophistication. When looking at this picture, it makes me believe that he has used a single light with a soft box to create a painted look. This is accentuated by the black background, which helps blend the shadows in. Guido Mocafico in my opinion has the ability to literally get any simple object such as a pocket watch and somehow manages to make it look like a work of art. I believe that one of the biggest factors to his work that creates this look is his use of black backgrounds, which work very well with the shadows he creates. In this series of photos his light setup looks fairly simple. He uses one light to illuminate the faces of the watches. As there are no hotspots, it looks as if he has just used a soft box and possibly flagged the light away from the background to avoid illuminating the backdrop and ruining the textures created from these photos in particular. I think that some of the techniques Mocafico uses could be very useful in the setup that I use for my photographs. I think that using a darker background may really help in my photographs as I am shooting in black and white medium format, therefore a large range of tones are needed to really make the final images stand out. I could use this to help blend the shadows off of the objects I use. I also like the idea of using a soft box or alternative lighting methods to avoid any hotspots and unwanted reflections from the photos.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=irving+penn+still+life&safe=off&nord=1&source =lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=EZO4UqqDA8OShgeGuIGoCA&sqi=2&ved=0CAcQ_AUoA Q&biw=1440&bih=722#nord=1&q=guido+mocafico+still+life&safe=off&tbm=isch&fa crc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=OspFkme6HiIHwM%3A%3BZagV_8iehvA_OM%3Bhttp%253A %252F%252Fjmcolberg.com%252Fweblog%252Farchives%252FGuidoMocafico.jpg% 3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjmcolberg.com%252Fweblog%252F2008%252F02%252Fg uido_mocafico_1%252F%3B450%3B351 (Used Google for the images. 23-12-13) http://www.mocafico.com/stilllife.html (23-12-13)