I’ve fine-tuned this methodology over the years as my personal visual sense has evolved.” I learned in school that you could achieve a great deal with just one light. “My personal taste in lighting has always been to opt for the simpler, more natural approach. Savitch’s lighting has much to do with how he envisions his projects. Sometimes it’s just about the silhouette of an object, seeing the outline of something against black or white, rather than seeing what it really is.” His “stroboscopic” technique (see below) takes that concept to the next level. I like to do conceptual work as well, trying to boil things down to their simplest elements. I like to push the envelope and test a lot. Savitch defines the work he does as “high-end, commercial tabletop/still life, centered on luxury-brand cosmetics, alcoholic beverages, and fine jewelry. The bottle is sitting on black Plexi situated on sawhorses. A rim light was added, coming from a sheet of Plexiglas being lit from behind, with a black card behind that. The bottle was lit with a diffused Broncolor head from overhead. He was especially careful not to point the different-colored (gelled) lasers into the sensor at a 90-degree angle, which could damage the sensor. Savitch generated the squiggles using a laser pointer to give the shot a jolt of electricity, as it were. Europeans were, and still are, very open to exploring and trying new things, always going into a shoot with an open mind.” Working in Europe helped Savitch bring a certain zest to his photography, as he explained: “I found Europe very accepting of a diversity of photographic styles. So my career as a photographer actually began in Amsterdam.” He soon gravitated to Paris, where he’d spent time as a youth. “I’d known some designers who wanted to move away from commercial still life and do work that was more groundbreaking and more interesting, artistically speaking. But it wasn’t long before the international photography scene drew his attention, taking him to Holland. He then majored in photography at the NYU School of Arts and started assisting upon graduation. In high school, Savitch built a darkroom in his parents’ basement and took photography classes one summer at SUNY Buffalo. “I started in photography at 13, taking my mom’s Nikon and making it my own.” “I’ve been an admirer of still life photography ever since I was a kid,” Savitch recalled. Savitch’s love of photography started early. The jar was lit with one diffused flash head and a couple of mirrors. Each element, including the cream at the top of the jar, had to be photographed individually. There was a red gel in front of the key light source, which was positioned behind the bowls, adding the red streaks. The wash of white light comes from a tiny battery-powered LED positioned inside the bowls. This shot is a composite of long and short exposures involving a pair of rotating bowls (one inside the other), positioned slightly off-center, on a revolving platform.
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