Stock Photo Gallery

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

When natural light and a reflector can help creating a studio shot


When playing with lights sometimes you never know how many you might need and if you don't have enough, well you still have the sun to help you. For these photos I had two SB800 but, to achieve the desired effect I needed an extra help.

No "moving" reflector has been used for
this shot
First of all let’s see how I organized the table. I have a squared piece of glass sitting on top of four plastic cups to separate it from the base. Under the glass there is one SB800 with a red gel, above the glass we have the Molix' Finder 110 sprayed with water. Off camera right slightly above the subject is the other SB800 through a translucent umbrella, while the window of the room is opened and its position is again on camera right.




Here we are using the "moving" reflector
but the SB800 with the red gel has been turned off
On camera left a friend is holding a silver reflector with a bit of a hammered surface; is not flat and smooth and it works better for what I want to achieve. The exposure time is 2 seconds, enough to be able to play with the light coming from the window and mix it with the speedlights.





Shot taken with the setting described in
the post
When I take the shot my friend is moving the reflector for the 2 seconds of the exposure and the light coming from the uneven silver surface paints some sort of “blurred” background with liquid lights and shadows while the product has been perfectly lit by the SB800. The water sitting on the glass surface also helps achieving this result but as you can see in the three shots, the difference really pops out.



It is very exciting for me to always explore new ways of lighting a product, the studio gives you so many different opportunities and the subjects never complain J I hope this give you some ideas for your studio work and if you think of a way to improve it your comments are always welcome.

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