Playing with light
I’ve scanned through the course and read the forums so know some of the later work is around lighting. Up till now I’ve just tended to shoot with whatever light is there but Emily sitting in the window a couple of weeks ago got me thinking! Then a couple of days ago the lighting I had in my mind appeared so we set up this photo.
The main source of light is our nearest star, bright mid afternoon sunlight from a cloudless sky back lighting Emily through the window (looking out of the window you face pretty much due east) by being bounced off the white painted house directly across the single track lane we live on (now that is one big reflector, don’t think it would fit in my camera kit!). Then some artificial light from the 5 x 40w halogen bulbs in the ceiling fitting about half way between me and Em and slightly to my right which is all diffused and scattered by the Swarovski crystal light fitting.
Looking at the colours around her neck and the colour of the t shirt which is really white I guess the AWB picked up on the strong daylight (confirmed by the as shot colour temp of 5000K) so giving the artificial light the warm orange feeling which I think contrasts nicely with the stark back lighting. Adjusting the image to the 2700K colour temperature of the halogen lights gives natural skin tones and a white t shirt but everything in the background takes on a rather strange blue tint. An added complication of using different light sources in one shot I guess.
1/400 sec at f5 brought the silhouette effect I was looking for and the wide aperture helped throw the glazing bars on the window and lamp behind her out of focus. There wasn’t a way to set this up without one of of the glazing bars growing out of the top of her head, at the moment I’m not sure if I should leave the vertical bar as it or have a play in Photoshop to either get rid of it all together or thin it down to the width of the horizontal bars.
See and Imagine 