I was in Sydney over Xmas 2017, catching up with family and various friends. As per my usual habit, I took way too much camera/lighting gear so I decided to make use of it so I could pretend I had justification for carting it all up there.
After shooting some cool photos of Lucy being a karaoke popstar in her very pink bedroom, I then wondered what I could do with her younger brother Tāne. As he likes superheroes, we decided to get him into one of his costumes and I started thinking about how I could light him in dramatic superhero style.
The photos that follow are the initial setup test shots and then some of the actual photos from the mini-shoot.
The first challenge was finding a space in their domestic home that I could make look cool. I noticed some wooden blinds in their lounge room and thought maybe they would work as a backdrop. Seeing the red and yellow colours of his costume, I thought the blinds might look cool with some yellow light to tie them together. I grabbed a speedlight on a stand, a yellow gel and a radio trigger and put them out on the back porch aimed at the blinds.
I wasn’t sure if this would work as it was mid-afternoon and there was bright sunlight out there. Would the gelled light be powerful enough to show up on the blinds or would it be overwhelmed by the sunlight?
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All I need to do is adjust the angle of the blinds for better consistency…
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With my background looking good, I now setup a 60x60cm Godox softbox inside to light my superhero subject…
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Now I’m ready to introduce my superhero subject into the shot…
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Moving the softbox away from the blinds helped control the light spilling onto them. I also added a grid to the softbox to keep it aimed only at him. There’s a lot of shadowing across the face but I’m cool with that, it gives me a little drama in the shot.
With the light working, it’s then just a case of working poses with the model…
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For this next shot I had his Dad holding a reflector at the right. I still have dramatic shadowing across the face but the reflected light makes it less black…
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Turning him to face the light is less dramatic but there’s still fun shots to be had…
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This shoot was about 15min of shooting time and perhaps 15-30min of setup time. Short and sweet.