How to control the background and lighting of still life photography?

Still life photography, as its name implies, is the photography in which the photographer arranges and combines some inanimate objects organically, adds personal intentions and techniques, expresses certain meanings in a static state, and gives a certain sense of form and artistic atmosphere.

I shoot still life photography mainly with small ornaments at home as the shooting object, and express my personal thoughts in different shooting ways through different ideas, furnishings, lighting and some photography skills.

As an amateur photographer, I am most concerned about shooting equipment and lighting equipment. In fact, my setup is very simple, and the investment is not great. Sometimes I feel a little humble, but it also brings me a lot of fun to shoot:

Shooting equipment:

Fuji finepxs20pro (6.2 million pixels) digital camera, which has a 35mm-210mm (f: 2.8-3.1) Fuji zoom lens equivalent to 135 camera, has ordinary macro and super macro (1cm), multiple.

Jeter enlarges the additional lens by 2 times;

Tripod;

Other accessories include: gradient grey mirror, soft lens, starlight lens, close-up lens, orange (80A) and blue (82A) filters, cable release, etc.

Lamps and lanterns:

Two small household 32-gear flashlights

A desk lamp with cover (60W)

Timely spotlight for outdoor travel (40W)

A small blue flashlight.

A 80*80cm silver-black double-sided reflector and several small reflective cardboard.

A piece of flannel with a black background.

Let's get down to business. Let me briefly talk about my experience in shooting still life with illustrations, which may be easier for beginners to understand.

Because the selected objects are mostly small, the lamps I use most are spotlights and small reflective cardboard, and sometimes I shoot with natural light.

Example 1. light bulb / third wheel

The inspiration for this picture comes from a light bulb that I accidentally broke, and the idea of creation came into being at that time. Conceptually, it is intended to show that the original luminous light bulb has finally completed its mission, adding the element of "flame" to make the dull light bulb interesting and visually enjoyable.

Light is mainly treated by reflective illumination. Because the light bulb has a great reflective effect on direct lighting, I use side backlight to shoot, and add reflective cardboard on the left, right and front as the main light source. In this way, the indirect reflection illumination on the photographed bulb will not produce a large light spot, so that the texture of the object can be truly reflected and the separation effect between the subject and the background can be enhanced. When I press the shutter, I light the lighter and move the flame to the pre-planned main position, leaving the flame track and creating the burning effect.