Keep it simple (stupid)

Looking back on the photos in the last few posts I was unhappy with the lighting. These photos were just showing photos of various bits of kit I have made or modified and were not supposed to be amazing photos themselves. However if I'm going to improve I need to take every opportunity to make great photos and not settle for anything less.

I had wanted something quick and only involving one flash (the others would be involved in the photos themselves) so originally I just put a flash in a shoot through brolly above and left of camera to get a fairly large light source to keep the shadows soft (this set up is equivalent to experiment 2 below). However I didn't pay any attention to were the shadow was falling.

Today I tried a number of experiments to see if I could improve on the lighting. See the results below - each row has the shot and a version of the shot with the black point shifted to emphasise the shadow (I moved the black point to the same value for all the experiments) and the set up of the shot.

Experiment 1: I just used a bare flash, in the same position the brolly had been to show the effect without the brolly. The light is hard and the shadow very well defined.

Experiment 2: I recreated the original lighting. Shadow is soft but could look better if placed under the subject.

Experiment 3: I moved the umbrella so it was more above the subject to move the shadow. Unfortunately this also put some of the body of the flash in the shadow of the head.


Experiment 4: I brought the brolly down closer to the subject. This makes the light source bigger relative to the subject and hence produces softer shadows. Results are good but the front of the body of the flash still needs some fill and the shadow although softer is still to once side.

Experiment 5: I put a large white thing right of the subject to reflect some fill. This does a nice job of making the front lens of the flash head white and filling in some of the shadows on the front of the flash body.

Experiment 6: Flash on camera bounced off white ceiling above. Much bigger light source than the brolly. Shadow perfectly soft and under the subject. Much less kit, slightly more brain - the best light of the lot!

It is so easy to overcomplicate things. Often when going to make a picture I reach first for the new bit of kit or just get out loads of stuff and work out how I'll use it all. In this case all I needed was the flash on the camera pointed at and the ceiling (If I'd wanted to move or rotate the camera I'd have been better with the flash off camera, on a stand, but still pointed at the ceiling)