Creating the Photograph

Creating the Photograph: Dina Belenko’s “Balancing Donuts”

Chris Gampat
No Comments
09/09/2015
3 Mins read

Weekend donuts

Creating the Photograph is an original series where we interview photographers about a photo that they shot and how it was achieved. The results are some knowledge passed on to you. Want to be featured? Email chrisgampat[at]thephoblographer[dot]com.

Photographer Dina Belenko had this really cool conceptual idea involving donuts and lots of other breakfast fare. She hails from Khabarovsk, Russia, and is a photographer who specializes in conceptual ideas. This is apparent not only in her 500px profile previously linked, but also in her Behance profile. Dina tells us that she loves sweets, so she wanted to make something beautiful out of them. This one also satisfied her idea to get into working with unstable objects in an image.

See how Dina created the images in her own words after the jump.

The Concept

lighting-diagram

I’m a sweet tooth. I guess, there’s nothing that inspires me more than coffee and sweets. So I just wanted to make something beautiful with them. Maybe, with a tiny twist.

I always wanted to try this kind of photo: unstable, balancing composition with sweets and coffee. My first try resulted in quite a nice picture but I also created a total mess in the process. I suspended a pile of cups from strings and, sadly, this construction didn’t last very long. So I set out to find another, lower-risk solution.

The Gear

— Nikon D800

— Nikon SB-910 flash

— octabox Wescott’s 43″ Apollo Orb

— colored background

— sheet of transparent plastic

— set of little supports

— donuts, marshmallow and coffee cups

The Shoot

Stages taken from Dina’s Behance post.

1 Props

1. Props and setup: I took a sheet of transparent plastic (glass will also do, but you should be more careful with it… plastic is much safer) and set it a short distance from the colored background.

This was the main trick: all the shadows that show the volume of the objects will remain in place, but the shadows falling on the background will disappear—this way, all the objects will look like they’re levitating.

2 Supports

To add some depth and volume to the composition, I placed my objects on little supports (it turned out that children’s wooden blocks work really well). I tried to put all the cups and sweets at different heights and different angles so that they overlapped each other.

You can’t see these supports from above, but from the side they’re clearly visible.

3 Details 1

2. Details: After creating the basic composition, I took a shot with my hand “propping up” the entire structure, added some sprinkles on the donuts, and poured some tea in the cups.

3 Details 2

I decided not to make splashes, but only a couple of tea drops.

Post Production

4 Post-processing

I merged all the photos together: the whole composition, my hand. and tea drops all combined into one image. Then I made this image brighter to match with another of my shoots I captured in the same style (the result of my first try), and gave the image a little polish (like straighten the form of donuts and deleting some scratches from the plastic).

And that’s all!

500px balancing donuts behance Dina Belenko donuts Photography
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.