Professional photography has become more demanding because we have better tools. This was composited from five separate images then retouched.

The shot we needed was a steaming cup of coffee with a spoon. Someone might think, "Just pour a cup, snap a shot and be done," right?

Well, not if you want a good shot. If you want something better than the all-too-common amateur cellphone-snap-look, the lighting on the spoon, table, steam and cup have to differ a good bit. Lighting this in the studio requires multiple soft and hard lights, each with numerous flags, grids, snoots and gobos to control what gets lit and how. Then, you pour hot coffee to get the steam rising – again, and again and again . . . because steam and smoke can be shot well, but it takes time, patience and trial-and-error. A lot.

But, thanks to COVID, I couldn't do any of these this time. Home-officing it, I lacked access to my usual studio, as well as the Speedotron lights and modifiers I'd typically want. But thankfully, I only had one shot and had access to other lighting. Instead, I shot this in my living room using only two Godox strobes and a few modifiers.

If you know lighting, though, it looks like there are at least three soft lights and two hard lights. That's because this image is actually a composite of five shots, each lit separately for the spoon, table and cup, plus for fill and highlights. After shooting these separately, I combined them in Photoshop using just the part of each shot I needed to get the exact same look that I would have gotten in the studio using the Speedotrons etc.

If one were to think that now there's no need for the studio and other lights, surprisingly, they would be mistaken – for at least three reasons. First, you have to be able to do it as a single shot, or you won't know how to shoot it as a composite. Second, compositing like this is somewhat faster (not easier, btw) for one or two shots – but if you need more than that in the same lighting (common when shooting professionally), it's way faster to use the studio and set all the lights once. Third, compositing like this works only with still life and a locked down camera. Within reason, you can't shoot anything that moves this way.

Oh, what about the steam? I almost forgot.

No steam. I created it in Photoshop. In fact, I didn't even use coffee. Why waste a good cup of joe?