Backlighted shot

For one of my entries for the 2012 Chicago flower and garden show I decided to do a people and plants/flower shot. I had this concept of including 2 people in the shot holding a single rose. But instead of the usual portrait lighted up in the front I decided to use backlights, make it look a bit different. I wanted to just outline the 2 people and make the rose the center of focus. I thought that it will make the shot more interesting than a usual couple holding a rose shot.

So for this shot, I used a plexiglass light table. I had a light table that was 40" across...that will give me plenty of room to move around my camera for my desired framing. I lit up the back of the light table with a strobe equipped with a softbox. The softbox evens out the lighting so I don't get a really hot spot in the middle of the frame. For me to be able to grab attention to the rose that were holding, I lit that up with a strobe from above...attached to a light boom. To prevent light spillage from the light above, I attached a snoot with a grid and aimed it at the rose, the snoot concentrates the light into one spot and prevents light spillage. Be very careful when using a snoot with some strobes, especially with modeling lights, as the modeling lights tend to heat up the snoot enough to melt the plastic housing of some lights. I had to turn it off after I know where its aimed so the temperature stays cool for my strobe.

I then attached my camera to my tripod, attached my wireless shutter release to the body, set my focus to manual and focused to where I expect the flower will be, since I will be triggering the camera myself I needed to prefocus it because it's really troublesome to have autofocus set with this kind of shot. I set my aperture to f14 so I have enough depth of field between the flower and our faces...by the way, that's me and my fiancee holding the rose if I forgot to mention that.

We did a couple of test shots but our faces and our hands seem to be out of the frame in every shot and I don't have any idea of our positioning was right. I then tethered my dslr to my desktop to let us see the preview while I shoot and without moving our heads and our hands. The tethering helped a lot, we adjusted our heads and hands till we got the shot.


The finalized shot

So my photo won 1st place for people and plants category. Hopefully I win again next year.

Backlighting a subject

I was thinking of new ways to light up my subject today. I didn't really feel doing the usual 3-4 light setup for the studio so I opted for something different.

A one light setup is a good idea. And to make it more interesting, I decided to go with backlighting...with a colored gel.
I wanted to mimic a sunset look so a yellow gel for the light is perfect.

Gels are perfect for coloring backgrounds. They can also be used to cast colors on the subject. It depends on how you want the color to be.

For this shot I used 1 light, gelled with yellow coming from the back of the subject.
Since I am only using 1 light, I can open up my aperture more, f4 to be exact, for a dramatic focus effect.