9th
Photoshoot - Tennis ball
Back to lighting again (the Aperture data management article is already in the works though) - this was a quickie I did during a lunch break a while ago.
My initial goal was to make something cool with the tennis racquet strings, showing the translucent nature, and maybe try to work with the texture of the ball. As I went through the shoot, I also decided to effect the colors in the picture to make it more interesting.
So first I fixed the racquet onto the table, and started placing lights. I knew the spill would be major problem, so I reached for grids immediately - it produces highly directional beam of light with soft falloff on the edges (grids are really cheap/easy to make).
I placed SB-900 right below the ball (pointing up), set the power to 1/16 and attached the grid. Test shot revealed the exposure was bit too high, so I dialed it down to 1/32.
Now to get the side shape of the ball lit, I placed SB-600 on the stand, about the same level as the racquet was, just tiiiny bit above. Again I used grid to help focusing the beam of light, but in this case I also had to prevent the light from hitting the edges of racquet (I wanted to light just the ball).
The solution was easy - I just placed small piece of cardboard along the bottom edge of the flash (these things are called “gobo’s”, as in “goes between you and light” - in this case it prevented the light from going too low and hitting the frame). I dialed 1/16 power to the flash (been using Alienbees CyberSync for this shoot to get some practice), and I had my picture - almost.
The shadow side of the ball was slightly too dark for my taste. Fortunately I have few small “mirrors” in the arsenal, consisting of piece of reflective foil sticked to a cardboard, so I placed one of these right to the ball (just far enough not to be visible in the frame), to bounce some of the SB-600 light back to the ball. It sure fixed my issue with dark shadow side.
Now, remember the idea of playing with colors? Time to reach for gels, and this turned out to be the most complicated part of the shoot - as not every color combination works with the acid-yellow-green material of the tennis ball. The final/good combination I settled for was 1/8 CTO (orange) gel on the SB-900 below the ball, and dark blue gel on the SB-600 for side light.
Now I had my final picture of the lunch break.
