Creating My Own Sunlight!

orangesplash-web-5226, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

I have wanted to do a set of the typical fruit splashing into water type shot for my commercial portfolio and to sell as a stock photo for quite a while now. Originally this was supposed to be shot outside on a birght sunny day when the sun was high in the sky. You think it would have been a much simpler setup, having no lights to setup, just the sun. I soon realized that factors such as the wind, and not being able to see the damn LCD screen on the back of the camera was just to overbearing for me to take. After about 500 images taken that day, I was not satisfied. I got nothing useable.

Then I though…”Why not make my own sun?”. Don’t get me wrong I am a big fan of natural light and doing things as simple as possible. For this type of shot however, a controled lightsource and environment is what I was going for. Off to the studio it is! I used the same concept but instead of using the sun as my main light, I used an alien bee 800 studio head above, and added a backlight to pop the detail in the orange. I then decided to add a third light as a kicker on to the left of the orange. I purposely kept the speedlights and the alien bee turned down on low power for not only the recycle time, but for the fast flash duration. It would be that quick duration that would freeze the motion that I was after. The whole thing was setup on a silver reflector to bounce light back up into the fruit and water. All the bubbles were created by dropping the orange slice into sparkling water. I used “Perrier” although, I know you can grab cheaper stuff at the grocery store. I knew I wanted a nice complimentary color to go with the orange so I chose green. I simply, scotch taped some green construction paper around the glass vase that I dropped the orange into.

 

 

The beauty of lighting this whole thing in the studio, was there was no wind, and I could use a 580EX set to master to pop both the slave flashes and the alien bee! No sync cords required. I keep trying to see what I can pull off without PocketWizards, but I do know that someday I am going to have to cave in and buy some. For now, mostly everything I do is done with the Canon wireless system. I prefer to use my speedlights on manual, because I can lock in their output and it won’t change due to ETTL. With a camera like the 40D, I can do right into the menu and tell each flash what to fire at. SO COOL! I cannot stress enough what a relief it was when I finally figured this out.

So, if your trying to shoot something and the sun isn’t cooperating or it’s too damn windy, just take it inside and make your own sun! Ok, so maybe this wouldn’t always work, but it is worth a try!

Craig