Thursday, November 25, 2010

We're Expecting - 4 Months In

If you know me personally, then you probably already know.  This is our first and we're really excited.  My wife and I have been married for a couple of years now.  This surely made 2010 a great year for us, and I can't imagine what 2011 would bring.

My wife asked me the other day for some photos of her and her tummy, so she show it to her boss abroad.  She said her boss has been asking her for photos to see how she looked like now that she is pregnant.  I took a snap of her, and being the Strobist that I am, I pulled out a lightstand, umbrella, and my flash and started setting up.  I took the picture on the left as she instructed, something that shows her tummy bigger than before.  I kinda liked it, but was thinking of something more artistic.  Something to keep for the photo album and to show the baby when eh/she grows up.  So I asked her to sit down, while I changed the setup




For you photographers out there this is a tip/trick I learned from the One Project I did last summer.  It's basically creating a black background out of nothing.  Before the details for that, let's see some of the photos from that night:





At 4 months, her tummy wasn't taht big yet, so I decided to light it differently to show the her curves.  See how dark the background is?  I didn't put anything behind her to cover up the living room curtains (that's what she had behind her).  The technique is to make sure your light only hits what you want to see in the final image.  Here are some steps for the invisible background:

1.  Put your camera on Manual mode, and to your lowest ISO possible

2. Use your maximum sync speed on your camera.  My D70 goes to 1/1000 and still trigger my flash with a YN04II remote trigger, but for the shots above I only used a 1/160 shutter speed and an aperture of f4.  If you need your background (and the picture over-all) to go darker and you are at your sync limit, adjust your aperture to a higher number (f5.6, f 8, etc) until you get the background your looking for.

3  Bring in the flash, place it either in front or behind the subject (as in the examples above).  Use a diffuser, or even something that would block the light from the background.  For the photos above I used a black reflective umbrella that I closed halfway (see setup shot below).  You could just block your flash's light by taping a peice of black cardboard and it will do just fine.

4. Adjust your flash's power to match your desired shutter-aperture setting.  In the photos above I used 1/4th power.

And that's it. this should make your background as dark as possible.  Here's the setup shot (I just made my wife sit down while I set it up):


See how dark the photo was?  Only the things that the light will hit will show on the final photo.  If you have any suggestions or tips on making your own black background out of nothing, hit me up through the comments.

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