Knife Practice

One of my mini-projects this summer was to photograph a collection of knives. Most of them are folding knives, but there are a few other types, including some art knives.

Knives are an interesting subject. They are three dimensional, even sculptural, and often shiny. Depending on the knife, a viewer wants to know who made it, and to see if it’s got something that makes it different from the penknife someone might carry in a pocket.

My goal was to photograph them all in a similar manner, and to do it over a few set ups. I also wanted to photograph them against something other than white seamless, because that’s boring.

For this project, I photographed each knife against the same piece of Vermont Slate (I love rocks as backgrounds). That alone helped to unify the series. I used similar lighting, camera angles, exposure settings, and processing for the series. In the end I photographed 49 knives over about 6 weeks, with breaks for other projects. There are 738 images in my Lightroom catalog including tests, with about 650 “final” images.

Here is a sampling of what I photographed:

composite of 16 pictures of knives on a slate background

Knife Typology

I learned a lot doing this project. First and foremost is that I can do this sort of repetitive subject. I know now that if I really truly wanted everything to be identical I would have made a set and not moved it until I was finished. However, given that the knives were of varying sizes, I don’t think I could have ever made them identical.

I also had “fun” picking out the slate. Given that I wanted something more “masculine” that would show off the knives, I thought it turned out ok. It wasn’t as easy as I’d though it be to find the stone, and then my choices were limited. I was looking for something not-shiny, something blue/gray, something dark, something big enough to showcase the biggest knives. The slate turned out well, but on reflection, I think I would have preferred something a little more muted in color.

Near the end of the project (as the knives got bigger) I realized I wanted to suspend some knives so I could photograph them away from the slate (to showcase their dimensionality). This was much harder to do than I expected. I am not a fan of using monofilament, because controlling the position of the object is difficult. In the end, I photographed these knives like the others, but then rearranged the set so that I could prop them “in the air” (though not really) to photograph the 3D parts.

There are more technical bits I learned, here are a few of them:

  • Let the fluorescent lights warm up for at least 30 minutes (preferably more)
  • The 55mm macro and 105mm macro lenses have different color casts (the 105 appears to be greener)
  • The 55mm macro and 105mm macro lenses do not give the same luminance for the same exposure values (the 105 appears to be about ⅓ stop lighter)
  • Wear thick gloves when cleaning knives
  • Wear latex gloves when handling knives before photographing them
  • Have reflector cards/gobos available at all times.

Here are some of my favorites…

Close up on the blade

Wraith

Detail of cross-guard, very shiny and pointy

Dagger

Detail showing blade of non-folding knife extending into wooden handle

Crawford

Straight knife with carved and painted eagle pommel

Eagle

Detail with side view of eagle head. Its mouth is open.

Eagle detail


What would I do differently? I would probably use strobes, because of having to wait for the lights to stabilize… in a small room… in summer. It was hot working sometimes, though having continuous light is wonderful for figuring out where the reflections are going to land.

I would also probably tether my camera to my computer. I don’t do this enough, probably because my main photo processing computer is not in my studio, and I’d have to set up my laptop and still figure out a way to get the images to my desktop machine. So for a similar project in the future, I might spend the extra time to figure this part out.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how things turned out. It’s not “catalog” perfect, but that’s not exactly what I was going for. However, I do know that I can do catalog work, if somebody wants me to.