Vintage Books – Shakespeares Complete Works, c.1915

Shakespeares Complete Works, 10 volume, published by McKay c. 1915

This volume of books was published about 109 years ago and, in my opinion, was worthy of a photograph.  Because the covers and bindings were fraying so badly with considerable signs of deterioration I wanted to make sure that I captured that detail in my images.  To do so I took (4) separate images of the books and bookends allowing me to get quite close with the 85mm lens.  I then stiched them together in photoshop ultimately rendering a 16 x 9 image.

I used a MACRO lens and took a close up image of a small 2″ x 3″ patch where there was considerable wear to the binding.  I then took the image of the books and merged it on top of the image of the worn book binding which would act as a background and merged them together in PS.  This lent itself very well to the vintage feel of the image.

IMAGE of BOOKS:  Photographed with a Sony A7RV and a Sony APS-C 50mm, f1.8 lens at the equivalent of 75mm.
1.3 secons, f11, ISO 100, MANUAL MODE. A (5) shot image merged in Photoshop into 1 image. Ring lighting used to provide front lighting.

IMAGE of WORN SPOT on BINDING: Photographed with a Sony A7RV and a Sony 90mm MACR, f2.8. lens.
15 seconds, f11, ISO 50, MANUAL MODE. Ambient light with a white reflector to fill the shadows.