Category: Studio Lighting

Commercial Photography at GCC: Still Lives & Product Photography

5/1/2026

A couple of months ago, I decided to sign up for a commercial photography class at Glendale Community College on a whim! Last semester, I was thinking about taking this class in the spring, but I didn't think it would be possible due to my work schedule at the time. Thankfully they ended up being able to accommodate me & I'm able to take 2 days off a week & work from home, so I can take this class.

Not only are we still honing the skills we learned in strobe lighting last semester, we're learning a whole artillery of new skills in commercial photography, as well as some training in business practices, which I really need! As I'm trying to pivot my "career" goals & come up with back-up plans to make money, or even side gigs, this class has been way more valuable than any photography class I took in art school. 🥲 I wish I got to spend more time in community college first. The experience has felt challenging, but refreshing & supportive.

We've had a number assignments since we've started, but I won't be sharing all of the work I've done. Here's a few of my fav compositions.

Photos were made with my Nikon ZF & GCC's Profoto strobes.

View from a computer for the full experience!
Click any image below to enlarge.

This was for the first assignment for the class! The assignment was really to practice & pay attention to soft vs. hard light & color theory. Since I'm still new at adding lighting to my work, this was a great exercise to start off with! And it was a great way to have me start thinking about how to use color more intentionally in my work.

This assignment was very challenging & it took me all day to troubleshoot because my set had so many items & I decided to make my life harder & choose reflective objects. 🥴 We practiced some product photography, but we particularly had to incorporate using the "freeze" mode on the Profoto packs to freeze liquid movement in the frame. As challenging as I made this assignment for myself, it was so fun & I was so happy with the results.

To view the rest of the work I've made during my time at GCC, please visit the tag:

NICA GOES [BACK] TO COLLEGE

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5th-8th Assignments at GCC

12/7/2025

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It's been a while since I've updated this space on the photo assignments I've been working on in my advanced lighting class at Glendale Community College!

These photos haven't been my favorite I've produced for the class & I don't think they're my best work, but I want to share the process of what I've been learning & the attempts I've been making to further improve & elevate my photography skills. Not everything I share will always be perfect & polished, but even after nearly 20 years doing photography, I'm still always in a constant state of practicing & learning, & I just want to share this for anyone who's ever feeling discouraged, anyone who's new to photography, or might be considering getting into it.

Below, I am sharing assignments 5-8, with the top being the most recent assignments. All photos were made with my Nikon ZF & a 24-70mm lens.

Click any image below to enlarge!

Assignment 8:
Inside Out/ Favorite Window

We learnt how to use flash fill for lighting interiors with windows, without washing out the ambient light coming in from the windows! Of course, I chose the hardest room in our house to photograph: our bathroom. It very small & cramped for all the photography & lighting equipment, making it very difficult to control the light. However, my instructor said considering how small the room was & the risk I had of light bouncing off the tiles, he said I did a decent job of not making the photo look over-lit! I used one Paul C. Buff strobe with a grid attached.

He also asked us to show what the photos looked like when we bracketed with the shutter speed, so that's shown below in the little screenshot thumbnail gallery I made from Lightroom.

And for those of you who don't know, I'm obsessed with the documentary series Never Too Small (NTS). Haha! More on this again later.

Assignment 7:
Blur/Sharp

We learnt how to light the background with continuous lighting & strobe for the model (or subject matter). For the background, I used an old shower curtain, which was not quite high contrast enough. I used a red gel on a continuous light to light the background, plus a ProFoto strobe.

The background lighting on the first 2 aren't quite right, so I doubled up the red gel & added a neutral density (ND) grey gel to make the red more intense.

I used a long exposure & added movement to the photos to create the blur effects as the stobe fired. Shoutout to my classmate, Ani, for being a stellar model. :)

Assignment 6:
Flashlight Portrait

Introducing our old ass teddy bear, Grandpa Bear, AKA GB or Gorilla Biscuits. Instead of using a person as my model, poor GB was subject to another one of our games, haha! I photographed this at a long exposure on bulb, I think for 10 seconds. My partner, AKA best assistant in the world, used a white bike light to light GB, then I went in with a red bike light to create the lasso effect. When I'd done this assignment, we were just in the process of rewatching Titans on HBO, & I was feeling inspired by Wonder Girl's lasso!

Assignment 5:
Flash Fill with Portrait

We were prompted to create this series of portraits, documenting the different effects of strobe lighting at different angles, using white fill cards to add fill to the model, or using a second strobe to add additional fill. Can you spot the differences?

I used Paul C. Buff strobes for these.

Shoutout to our class teaching assistant for modeling for me & also giving me pointers during the session!

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4th Assignment at GCC

10/15/2025

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Here is my 4th photo assignment for my advanced lighting class at GCC! The assignment was to create a portrait of a model with a cleanly lit white backdrop using only 3 lights. As you will see in the BTS photo, my model has 1 strobe with a softbox attachment to light her & a white card to add some fill in the shadows. You can't see the lights in the BTS photo, but the background is lit with 2 strobes firing into 2 white v-flats, which then reflected light onto the seamless backdrop, creating a consistent & clean white backdrop.

Shoutout to my model, Kas, for being such a good sport & also for being so photogenic. Isn't she gorgeous?

The second part of the assignment, which was harder than it looked, was to photograph a silhouette portrait with no light spill or wraparound from the background lights falling onto the model at all, with a white backdrop. This was harder to accomplish than I thought it would be! I thought it would be as simple as just turning off the light on the model, but it wasn't. When I first attempted the silhouette with Kas, I could not figure out how her silhouette was still getting light on her, even if it was very faint. The assignment required the silhouette to be flat black with no light whatsoever.

After spending 4 hours setting up the lights & photographing in the studio, I needed to pack up & try again later. I sent my instructor the silhouette photos I was able to create with Kas & asked for feedback, told him what I tried, & asked what else I could try? He recommended backing the model & camera further away from the backdrop & zooming my lens out all the way. Well... I had another go & this did the trick! I knew from the beginning I wanted to experiment with sheer fabric to see how it would react to the light on silhouette, & it totally gave the effect I wanted it to. I'm so glad I decided to give it another try!

For these photos, we practiced on different lights that were more powerful than the Paul C. Buff strobes we'd been using in the previous assignments — the Norman D24 strobes.

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3rd Assignment at GCC

10/15/2025

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Here is my 3rd photo assignment I created for my advanced lighting class at Glendale Community College! The assignment was to light a reflective object, so I chose a handheld mirror & placed a little Sugar Pill lipstick on top as an extra prop & burst of color to add a little contrast to the photo.

Wow, I struggled with this one a lot. I know it looks like a very simple composition, but the class is heavily focused on the technical & the requirement was to get a gradient in your reflective object, not just flat white all the way through. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to light this, so that there was a gradient in the mirror. I legit wanted to cry, hahaha! But glad I was eventually able to figure it out.

I received positive feedback from my instructor on the composition, color choices as well as being able to accomplish the gradient in the mirror. Apparently, what could have made it easier was to either change the angle of my camera so that it was higher, or to tilt the mirror somehow. However, he was happy that I stuck with this composition & made it work — even if it was a challenge & took a while to figure out.

I forgot to take a BTS photo of my setup! But I used 1 Paul C. Buff strobe with a grid attachment to light the background (which is what created the gradation in the mirror), & one strobe with a softbox attachment above & slightly to the left of my camera, just for a little fill on the objects.

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2nd Assignment at GCC

9/28/2025

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CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

💥 Been having a great time practicing strobes in my advanced lighting class at Glendale Community College!

This assignment was highly technical & there's nothing conceptual about the objects I chose at all. This exercise allowed us to practice lighting glass. The lighting diagram shows my process & the last photo shows the very elaborate setup in real life, haha. A lot went into ensuring the glass was lit all around without glares from the strobes. I used 2 Paul C Buff strobes (1 with a grid attached & one with a soft box attached) along with 3 white fill cards.

What do you all think? Did I nail it or nah? Let me know in the comments!

I don't know what I am planning to do with these new skills, but I am considering taking the commercial photography class next. The more I learn in this class, the more pissed off I am that I wasted years & thousands of dollars in art school to not learn any practical skills in photography, or the diverse jobs all available within photography alone. All they taught us was how to write and talk about our work, express ourselves, & read stacks of theory, haha. There was very little focus on the technical & I am annoyed that I'm only learning things like how to light glass after nearly 20 years of doing photography. But, I'm happy I'm learning now & we'll see where this can take me.

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1st Assignment at GCC

9/23/2025

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Some of you know, I’ve been taking a studio lighting class this fall! I got an undergraduate degree in photography & I took studio lighting 14 years ago, but retained none of the info, haha! Aside from an occasional on-camera flash, I never use lighting in my work. I wanted to see how much tech has changed since then, & the class has been a good refresher on how to use strobes. I appreciate how technical the class is, unlike the studio lighting class I took in art school, which was too focused on the conceptual. The instructor is also a photographer I worked with at my last job, & he encouraged me to take it. :)

This was for our first assignment. The assignment was to create a still life set & light it to photograph texture, using only one strobe & any mods. I used a Paul C. Buff strobe with a fill card. The setup & exposure can use some work, but I’m happy with the practice I’ve been getting in this class. The environment in community college feels way more supportive than it did in art school, & I feel much more motivated to try & give it my best.

We are required to keep lighting diagrams of our assignments. So here's a peak at what my lighting setup looked like! Like I said, it's not perfect & it still needs some work, but I am learning & practicing.

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Commercial Photography at GCC: Still Lives & Product Photography

5th-8th Assignments at GCC

Assignment 8:
Inside Out/ Favorite Window

Assignment 7:
Blur/Sharp

Assignment 6:
Flashlight Portrait

Assignment 5:
Flash Fill with Portrait

4th Assignment at GCC

3rd Assignment at GCC

2nd Assignment at GCC

1st Assignment at GCC

NICA AQUINO

Archives

Categories

Commercial Photography at GCC: Still Lives & Product Photography

5th-8th Assignments at GCC

Assignment 8:​Inside Out/ Favorite Window

Assignment 7:​Blur/Sharp

Assignment 6:​Flashlight Portrait

Assignment 5:​Flash Fill with Portrait

4th Assignment at GCC

3rd Assignment at GCC

2nd Assignment at GCC

1st Assignment at GCC

NICA AQUINO

Archives

Categories

Assignment 8:
Inside Out/ Favorite Window

Assignment 7:
Blur/Sharp

Assignment 6:
Flashlight Portrait

Assignment 5:
Flash Fill with Portrait