Monday, 16 Feb 2009
Do you believe in magic?
It’s ironic.
I break my 2nd flash, find out my 3rd flash doesn’t even work with my Nikon CLS (lighting system), and finally FINALLY I figure out why I need more than 1 flash.
Funny isn’t it?
So while I’m waiting for my flash to be repaired (and waiting to receive 2 new ones), I decided to have some fun with my 1 flash.
The things you can do with just 1 flash…
There are 4 lighting zones:
1) lit area
2) shadow area
3) boundary between lit and shadow area
4) something I learned yesterday called the “specular highlight”. It’s basically the reflection of the light in your subject.
In the following image you can see the 4 zones on the red billiard ball. There’s the lit area which is circled in blue (I dunno why), the shadow area on the left side of the ball, the soft boundary between the lit and the unlit area, and finally there’s the specular highlight: the reflection of the window light in the ball.
The specular highlight is pretty cool because you can use it to actually create another tonal area in your subject AND/OR you can use it to create different effects in your frame AND/OR if the reflection is really powerful… you can light something else with it!
In my example below, I’ve used the specular highlight off my glowing hands to light my face.
Wait, you didn’t know that I could make my hands glow did ya? Apparently neither did I…
Shout out to strobist.com for inspiring me to learn more about lighting!
posted at 11:14pm
