To produce this effect I set the flash on the floor and angled it up and toward the wall.  This provided a bit of a gradient to the illumination, as you can see clearly in the photos below.  For the gray-scale images in the last lesson I used the bare flash.  Here, I covered the flash with various gels.  That is the only difference.  If you think about it for a few moments, you should be able to figure out that the light was at the lower camera right of each image.

Changes in saturation, whether white/gray or depth of color were made by varying the light output.

Red gel

Orange gel

Yellow gel

Green gel

Blue gel

Adding colored gels to your flash produces great results as you can see above.  My white wall became much more useful!  Remember, an important key to this technique is to have the subject a good distance from the wall.  This is necessary so that you can light the two independently.  It’s also the reason why photographers love backdrops.  Using a backdrop of the color you want allows you to work in a smaller space.

I mentioned it briefly above, but if you want to increase or decrease the saturation on the background color you can do that by increasing or decreasing the intensity of the light you are pushing through the gel.  More light will yield less intense color, and less light will give you deeper richer color.  That may sound a little counter-intuitive to some, but try it out and you’ll see the way it works.

One tip: Shoot manual on everything including ISO so that your camera does not make any decisions for you.  Otherwise you will have a difficult time predicting the effect of any change in the light level.  Take your time and get the exposure where you like it, and then begin varying one thing at a time until you get a shot that really makes you do the happy dance.  That’s what I did!

Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting

I realize that for many this is impossible or simply not the way you learn best.  I certainly think you can learn to light without it, but this particular book is an excellent reference that can give you a real jump start.

That said, what I really want to give you in this article is some insight into using your flash to create better images.  David Hobby over at Strobist is probably the most accessible professional out there for learning this.  David’s incredibly comprehensive site and his articulate presentation of information is simply a must-read.  When you go there, pay your first visits to his Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 Archive listings.  These can be found in the right-hand sidebar.  If you read each of these and follow David’s instructions, you will do much for your ability to light.  What’s more, you’ll find it almost effortless because David presents an approach that does not require light meters or any special equipment.  Feel encouraged to experiment.  Mistakes cost nothing on a digital camera.

One of the great things I’ve learned from the Strobist is how to get the ambient light in a scene where I want it, and then add one or more lights to obtain a desired effect.  One of my first attempts at using this knowledge was to demonstrate to myself that I could control the look of a white wall behind a subject.  Below are a series of images that show the same wall in shades of gray from white to black.

White or light gray - just the wall

In this particular case, I darkened the room.  This was really due more to inexperience than necessity.  I then lit the background with my hot-shoe flash set to remote trigger when the other lights fired.  The idea here was to get a correct exposure of both the subject and the background.  This is a two-light setup.  The speedlight for the background and a small softbox for the subject.  I feathered the softbox to prevent its light falling on the background.  Basically that means that I angled it such that the edges of the light did not illuminate the background.  This isn’t possible if the subject is very close to the background, however.  In this case, my subject was over ten feet away from the wall.

Once I had a correct exposure dialed in (shooting manual here and just chimping until something good shows up) I reduced the power coming out of the flash.  Later in the series I plan to talk about a better approach to this, but that’s how I did it here.   The result was the images below.  Medium gray, dark gray, and finally (no light at all) black.

The real trick, of course, is to be able to do this is a well-lit room.  A future lesson will discuss that, but if you can achieve the result this way, you’ll have taken a solid first step into the realm of light control.

Dark gray

Black

Once I had the light where I wanted it, I carefully composed the final shot.  A low-key image of the subject.  I was personally very satisfied with the result.  As we progress through the lessons, you’ll see much better and more flexible ways to do this.  Varying the light level works in some cases, but often you have to use other techniques, as we’ll see.

Final image

Bryan suggests metering off the grass (or other greenery) as a close proximity for the 18% gray of a gray card.  He discusses the benefits of metering off the sky for certain shots as well.  I won’t go into the details of this here, but I’d encourage you to try using the spot-metering setting on your DSLR and learning to understand how it can help you in high-contrast situations.

The image of the east branch of the Moose river in New York’s Adirondack Park below was taken using one of Bryan’s tips.  This particular scene was actually not all that inspiring in person.  There was nearly no color in the sunset. Creative use of spot metering (taken from the sky just to one side of the setting sun) made the shot you see, and it is one of my personal favorites.

NOTE: If you begin your shopping at Amazon using a link on my site, it helps me expand what I do here.

I read an article by Ken Rockwell in which he wrote that most amateur photographers shot sunsets too early and that he wanted to shoot them after all the other photographers had left–about fifteen minutes to half an hour after sunset.

So there you have it.  It’s a very simple tip, but it can give you dramatic results.  Try shooting sunsets after sunset.

This lesson was coupled tightly with another.  When I first began taking pictures, I was enamored of the idea of night and low-light photography.  I loved the way buildings looked with light glowing from the windows, outdoor fixtures, and so on.  I often waited until after dark to shoot lights from houses, office buildings, and cabins where they were commonly reflecting off mountain lakes.

Shots like this can be improved vastly by shooting them during the few fleeting moments when the light in the evening sky is balanced with the light from the buildings.  Below are two examples that each demonstrate a different look achieved using this tip.

Sometimes lighting a photo is simply a matter of showing up on time, or waiting for the desired conditions.  Natural light can be some of the most pleasing because it is familiar and yet dramatic when exploited properly in a photograph.

However, Ken Rockwell posted a wonderful Christmas gift over on his site, and I really want you to know about it.

Ken wrote an article entitled “Simplicity“.

If you want to know how to make great photos; if you’ve wondered why your photography seemed to get worse after you got that fancy new gear you’d been coveting; if you are serious about your photography, you owe it to yourself to follow the link and read the article for yourself.

Resist the temptation to simply skim it or to “duck out early” and fail to finish it.  Ken says some very important things, and they aren’t all at the beginning.  Ken’s own statement on the importance of the Simplicity article is, “…probably one of the only two or three useful things I’ve written this year…”.  I agree with Ken, though by my count he has written a greater number of useful things than two or three.  This article is a must-read.

as required by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

.

PURPOSE

This Web site is established to provide information about topics of interest to me and about my photography and woodworking endeavors.   I take the time to write here because it is my hope and belief that some readers will find the information helpful.  For my part, I hope the site produces income for me.

How Income is Generated

This site currently generates (or has the potential to generate) income in several ways:

1. There are Google Ads on various pages. These pay me a few cents each time any of them is clicked.  I do not control what is advertised, nor do I receive direct payment from any of the advertisers; just the pay-per-click remuneration from Google.
2. Affiliate Links embedded in text or presented in other formats. These links take you directly to vendors with whom I am affiliated for marketing purposes.  Examples include, Amazon.com,
   
   ,
   , and
   .
   If you click on any of these links I am payed a small percentage of anything you buy from that vendor during that particular shopping session–even if you buy something to which I did not provide a direct link.  I fervently hope that you begin all online shopping with any of my affiliate vendors here at LarryEiss.com
3. Sale of products or services provided by me. I am a photographer and woodworker and my work is available for purchase.  This site provides a place where I can be contacted by anyone interested in purchasing any of my work or retaining my services.

I do not receive any form of compensation, gifts, or other consideration from any vendor or other party for anything I say here at LarryEiss.com or elsewhere.  When I provide my thoughts on a particular vendor, product, or service, I do so completely free of any ties to the subject other than my personal experience.  You get my unadulterated opinion.

If any of this changes, you’ll find out on the Disclosure page, which you can access any time from the “Read Me” tab at the lower left of the Blog header.

Larry

I have found a new theme called Suffusion by Sayontan Sinha that is highly customizable and I think it will meet the needs of the site for a long time to come.

LarryEiss.com has had a comfortable look for a while, but I want to enliven it and keep up with some of the latest trends in UI design.  In addition, newer themes are easier to customize, and this one is by far the best I’ve found in that regard.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

I’ve learned a lot about this from several places.  My journey began with Ken Rockwell who taught me to shoot after sunset and the value of balancing the light from the sky with that from surrounding buildings and other sources at dusk.  Having thus developed an interest in controlling exposure, I found Bryan Peterson’s excellent book, “Understanding Exposure”.  Bryan taught me that I could use the meter in my camera to help me create a better image.  Next came a careful read through “Light: Science and Magic“, a truly important work on photographic lighting.  Following that, I found “The Strobist“, David Hobby.  His Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 series of posts was revolutionary for me.  From there I moved along to the inimitable Joe McNally, a great shooter who gets jobs from the likes of Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.  Joe has an excellent and entertaining Blog as well as a couple of books.  The one I found most useful is “The Hot Shoe Diaries“.

I’m going to take the next few posts to discuss some of the things I’ve learned about light.  I’ll give you some examples and talk about some of the mistakes I made along the way.