Strobist Information: These three egg shots were from a shoot done for a friend. He was looking for a picture to depict a 'broken team'. He pretty much knew what he wanted for the final shot, a column of eggs four wide, disappearing into the background with the top of each egg smashed off. These shots are the trial pictures I took to get to that end goal. The first problem was how to get the eggs to stand up in a nice neat line. This is a problem I remembered seeing solved awhile ago by Apocrypha in his fantastic egg & spoon shot. I didn't have any sand and because I didn't want to waste the eggs I went with flour, but it worked perfectly. Once I had all the eggs lined up, the next job was to work out the lighting. Eggs are surprisingly shiny and it doesn't take a lot of power to blow out the highlights very badly. Also, because I had them packed tightly together, there were some deep recesses that are hard to get the light down into. I started with a light strip softbox on the right and then went with a bare SB-28 fired up at an angled white board above the eggs to bounce some light down into the gaps between them. I added a final SB-28 fired from behind through an Ikea chopping board diffuser to act as a rim light. I fired off a few test shots with the eggs intact and adjusted the power on the lights to get a nice balance. With the lights sorted out, the next problem was breaking the eggs. I had to somehow smash the tops off without shattering the whole thing and still have them all lined up. First I tried picking up an individual egg and tapping the top of the shell with the blade of a knife. Light taps had no effect. Slightly harder taps had no effect. A reasonably powerful whack resulted in a handful of broken egg. I needed a better plan! I decided to try breaking the eggs in place. I attacked the top of an egg with a teaspoon, breaking it like you would a boiled egg. As long as I didn't hit it too hard, this worked pretty well. It caused the top of the egg to crack reasonably evenly and allowed me to peel back the opening a bit at a time with the handle of the spoon and my finger. It took a while, but I eventually got all the eggs open and got the shot I was after. As I was cleaning up, I put the cracked eggs back in the carton to take to the kitchen. Just before I did, I took the You Crack Me Up shot by moving the baking tray out the way and putting a sheet of white card on the table. We had omelets for tea! :) Pictures here: Just Eggs Break Free You Crack Me Up Learn how to light: www.strobist.com