How to photograph a cracking egg.

I was experimenting today with how best to shoot an egg, cracking open without showing any hands or fingers.

The lighting was straightforward. I started out using the main doors for the natural light, but I needed a little extra to allow me to shoot faster with lower ISO. I flagged the background to darken it and did away with the usual reflectors.

The hardest hurdle would be to remove the fingers. On an average-sized egg, they would be removed in photoshop, but on a quail, the surface area is a little tighter.

The way I overcame this was to superglue a couple of large matchsticks to each end of the egg. Then carefully crack the egg in two.

With the second pair of hands holding the faux cracked egg, I filled it with fresh yolk and white. The egg was into position and on command, opened slightly to allow the content to fall out. It took a few eggs to be cracked open, but we finally got what we were after.

The cleanup was done, firstly, in Lightroom. For a quick fix, I started with the AUTO tone. From there, I increased the contrast and knocked back the shadows. I find Lightrooms AUTO makes the image a tad dull. Adding some texture and vibrancy it was time to edit in Photoshop.

Photoshop was used, simply to remove the match sticks and rogue fragments.

Back into lightroom for the final tweak and cropping and that's how this shot was put together.