Monday, December 14, 2009

This little light of mine

Shine a light (vertical)

I've been thinking about this shot for a while. Ever since I did the red Christmas ornament shots a week or so ago, I've been pondering what to do next and thought of photographing a candle out in the woods. I've just been waiting for the right time. The right time being either a fresh coating of snow or a foggy winter day.

The foggy winter day came today, so I packed a candle, lighter, camera, boom stand, flash, gels and grid and headed out to a local forest preserve. It was a pretty straightforward shot once the light was set up - the boom allowed me to place the flash directly above the candle to create a ring of light with a grid attached. A double layer of CTO gels allowed me to shift the color balance to incandescent to simulate twilight while maintaining a warm white light on the candle -- this was shot mid-morning.

The setup for the flash is shown below. After that it was just a matter of laying on my side in the melting snow until I framed up a few shots that I liked. Then home to change out of my wet clothes.

'Shine a light' setup shot

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

2 comments:

Wanda said...

James, I've been out of town for a couple of weeks helping my son with a booth at the Cowboy Christmas in Las Vegas.

As always I love coming back to your blog to see the most beautiful pictures around.

Thanks for giving some background and a picture of how you do it...It's nice to know you don't just "click" and get these magnificent shots, but a lot of time and thought and effort goes into each one.

You are the master.

Merry Christmas
Wanda

Adalberto Joco said...

Nice picture, awesome.

Thanks for share your know how