Shooting it: Under One Umbrella

Here is a shoot from last Christmas I did in Kobe. The location was around the harbor area in the city, and I clearly had that concept with the umbrella and the silhouettes of a couple lit from behind. I had the idea, but actually I didn’t think I will do it there, just happened to have this amazing sky, and my friends with me, so I asked them to stay under the umbrella while I play with my lights! Anyway had a few difficulties on my way to achieving it, but here we are with the result! It is a simple one light setup, and in this shot I managed to use one of the light modifiers as a main part in it!

Strobist info:

Nude Canon 580EXII behind the “Couple”, Canon 580EXII is triggered by Pocket Wizard II Plus. As simple as it can be, nothing else to say about the setup! You should just play a little with the shape of the shadow!

Lighting

As I already mentioned in the introduction, I went for that concept on that day, but there was one big problem that had to be solved… there wesa not any real couple to participate in it! Funny, that I had to ask my friends to act like they are very close under the umbrella, but in the end they did very good job! We were blessed by some amazing sky which contributed a lot to the final result of this shoot! Firstly I wanted them ti be kissing, but realizing that they are actually not really a couple, thought that this would be a bit too stressful for them! Then we just went with the concept of making something interesting with their hands, so here is the heart!

The lighting setup here is more than simple, one flash behind the “couple”, it was set on a tripod, because if it was down didn’t get very good effect. I am using my 45″ shoot-through umbrella not as a light modifier, but more as a main role in this photograph! I am triggering the Canon 580EXII with Pocket Wizard II Plus, The lens I’m using on my Canon 50D is Sigma AF 17-70 F/2.8-4.5 DC, a lens I’ve been using quite a lot before I switch to Full Frame. I will write a review about it soon, so stay tuned!

So here is just another example what you can do with only one light, depending where you set it up! You can create really interesting things by playing with shadows and shapes! Here is the final image I chose to show you, any comments are welcome!

In the end…

So in the end I would like to talk about our new project called Creative Lightbrary! We started it recently with my friend Ognyan Dimitrov, and we are going to post everything connected to digital photography where we will cover our experience with different light modifiers, DIY stuff, lighting diagrams, post production, useful software and many other tips. Our main goal is not to teach but to give everything that is useful for your journey in the world of digital photography. Click on the logo below to check it out!

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