ISO 100 | 85mm | f 8.0 | 1/250 sec

Busted out my strobes this week and did some experimenting with some different lighting techniques.  I originally did this shoot so that I would have some images to add to my stock-photography collection, but I had some images from the shoot that I just had to post.

Above is a silhouette I shot of myself against a white backdrop.  Basically I situated two strobes on either side of my white backdrop and set the light to 1/4 power.  I then torched the backdrop with light while simultaneously positioning myself in front of the backdrop (and the lights), thereby creating a silhouette.  Not exactly something I would hang on my wall, but it is interesting nonetheless.

So then I decided to try and reverse the process by highlighting my silhouette against a black backdrop.  This was a little more challenging because the positioning of the lights made a huge difference in how my outline was illuminated.  I still had two lights between me and the backdrop, one on either side, this time pointed towards me.  The only trouble with aiming strobes towards me (and consequently towards the camera), is that flash tends to produce glare on the camera’s lens.  This can be overcome through the use of gobos, but I decided to use 30 degree honeycomb grids instead to direct the light onto a small area of the frame (namely, me) and block light from hitting the camera.  The result is what you see below.

ISO 100 | 90mm | f 8.0 | 1/250 sec

I was pretty happy with this result, however, I wanted to see what would happen if I moved the lights closer to the subject.  In the image above, the strobes were a good 3 feet behind me, thus prohibiting the light from illuminating anything but the very edges of the subject.  However, when I moved the lights to where they were just 6 inches behind me, that’s when the light began to wrap around and create a look all of its own.  That’s what you see in the image below.

ISO 100 | 120mm | f 8.0 | 1/250 sec

My apologies for making this such a technical post, but I found it fascinating to watch and see how the simple positioning of lights and the slight differences in distance and direction can create totally different images.  Between the first and the second image was just a difference of the light’s direction (in the first it was towards the background, in the second it was towards the subject).  Between the second and the third image was just a difference of the light’s position (in the second image the light was 3 feet behind me, and in the third image it was 6 inches behind me).

Anyways, I hope you found my ramblings to be at least slightly educational.  And if you couldn’t understand what I said, hopefully you at least enjoyed the pictures.  😉

Until next time…