Today’s challenge was inspired by two photographers: 1. Michael Ray, who has a great “how-to” page that mentions using mirrors as light reflectors for backlit subjects and 2. Strobist, which is currently running Boot Camp II. The assignment for this week is to take a cover shot for a food magazine backlit with a high diffused source and front-lit with a small source for texture.
Since I’m getting ready to go out of town for a couple days, the food situation is looking pretty thin. I also wanted to play around with some new gels I made earlier this week so I decided to use toys for today’s challenge.
Step One: Determine depth of field and overall lighting tone.
1/180 sec @ f/2.5
In this composition, the background light will provide the overall lighting tone for the scene. When working with flashes (or any non-ambient light sources), use the camera’s shutter speed to determine the amount of ambient light and the aperture to determine the amount of flash light. Remember that aperture also determines depth of field so the trick is to determine how much depth of field you want and then adjust the light level to be brighter or darker until you reach the tone you want.
The background here is lit with my trusty IKEA desklamp, gelled with a homemade red gel.
Step Two: Set your main light levels
1/180 sec @ f/2.5
Once you get your background tone set, set up your secondary lights. In this case, I wanted to just feather the mainlight across Black’s back and sort of carve him out of shadow just a bit with the flash. To keep light from spilling onto and weakening the red light in the background, I fitted the flash with a gridspot and zoomed the flash head to its max setting.
I adjusted the flash settings until I was happy with the amount of light hitting Black. Light from the flash isn’t spilling on to the background but it is illuminating the table somewhat (visible in the lower right corner).
Step Three: The Mighty Gobo
1/180 sec @ f/2.5
Gobo is short for “go-between.” and means anything you can put between the light and subject. Gobos can be used to create patterns and texture (these gobos are often called “cookies”) and are often used to block the light. They don’t have to be anything fancy – you can make a gobo from black card, cardboard, fabric or tinfoil, as I did above. Tin foil’s quite nice as it can be molded and stands easily on its own.
I’m pretty happy with the above picture so now it’s time to play with reflectors.
Step Four: Reflecting the light
Here is the same scene with a 10cmx10cm folding mirror placed opposite the flash on camera left.
Here is the same scene with a piece of letter-size plain paper folded in half placed opposite the flash on camera left. Compare the two pictures above – the paper-reflected light is much softer and more diffuse than the mirror. Neither is necessarily better – whether you want a diffuse or hard highlight is up to lots of things, including the client, the art director, the bride, the magazine, and sometimes, even the artist.
The Setup
Gear Notes: Canon EOS 5D with 50mm macro lens. ST-E2 Remote Transmitter & 580EX II flash. Table lamp fitted with Honl Photo speedstrap and homemade gel. Leksvik kitchen table by IKEA. Tinfoil from CVS. Printer paper from Staples.
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