Still life lighting with an iPad

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Depending on where you live, you may want to stay inside this weekend. If so, this is a great little project for you to try. I was sitting home one Saturday afternoon - I wanted to do some shooting but didn't really want to leave the house. I decided to play around a bit.I grabbed my iPad, some heavy bath towels, some props and headed for the bathroom. Why the bathroom? Well, it is the best room in the house if I need total darkness as it only has one, small window. You will need total darkness for this to work. You also need a good tripod. I used a green fleece sleeping bag liner as my background and arranged my fishing gear. You need to set your camera to "manual focus" because everything from this point forward will be done in total darkness and the camera won't be able to focus. Set your shutter speed to 20 or 30 seconds (you will experiment with this, there is no "right" or "wrong"), focus on your composition, set your aperture to whatever you want in order to achieve the desired depth of field; then turn off the lights. You will use a "flashlight" app on the iPad to light your scene. I used a white light but you can experiment with color. While the shutter is open, move the iPad around the objects - you can randomly move or try to use a consistent pattern. The only thing you have to be careful about is to not point the light directly into the camera lens - always point down towards what you are lighting. That's it! When the shutter closes, take a look at what you have. You can make adjustments - longer exposure, shorter exposure, aperture, etc.... You can also move the light closer or further away, bring it closer to some areas and further away from others. The idea is to have fun - no two images will be lit exactly the same. You could also try having a second light source - maybe a small flashlight - emitting some color and use that to light the background a little. The sky is the limit! Push yourself and your creativity! I would love to see some of your results in the comments. Have fun!